From Maduabuchi Nmeribeh, Kano
Determined to fight the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic to a standstill, Kano state government has begun aggressive tracing of about 259 identified contact persons to avoid further spread of the virus in the ancient commercial city.
This was revealed by the state Coordinator of the COVID-19 Task Force, Dr Tijjani Hussain on Friday.
He said the state government has embarked on aggressive contact tracing of over 259 out of the listed 300 contact persons in the state.
According to him, “One of the hallmark of this response is contact tracing. At the moment, we have listed over 300 contacts person and we are following up on 259 of these contacts.
“These contacts, we follow them either through phone or visit them physically to their houses to ensure that we have not leave any stone unturned.
“Over these 13 days since we recorded the first index case, we are able to have 320 suspected cases out of which 73 are laboratory confirmed.
“Similarly, two of these 73 confirmed cases are health workers. Since the beginning of this outbreak, we were able to monitor 53 cases of passengers of interest (those people who came from high risk areas outside of Nigeria and states faced with high challenges of covid-19).
“We have also admit 63 out of the 73 cases and the remaining will be evacuated to the isolation centers.
“One of the hall mark of this response is contact tracing. At the moment, we have listed over 300 contacts person and we are following up on 259 of these contacts. These contacts, we follow them either through phone or visit them physically to their houses to ensure that we have not leave any stone unturned.
“As we have learnt, while we have momentary setback last week because our co-chair was diagnosed with covid-19, but the state government quickly put up another structure to ensure that the coordination mechanism does not break down.
“We have reconstituted and we are much stronger now. So kano people should be confident that this outbreak would be brought under control as soon as possible.
“We are also going to rapidly set up rapid response teams that will go and do investigation, take samples and ensure that these samples are delivered in our laboratories.
“We are in the process of increasing the number of rapid response team from 30 to 40.
Our testing centers do not run out of commodities.”
Dr. Hussain reassured that the Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje’s administration is determined to protect lives and stamp out the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic from the state, just as he solicited for the prayers and support of the people, adding that the fight against Corona Virus requires collective effort.
