Abia State government has denied any case of the Coronavirus in the commercial city of Aba or any part of the state. This is as the state government has assured that it was prepared to contain the virus if it eventually comes to Abia.
An online news portal had on Wednesday in a report titled, ‘Coronavirus in Aba : Stay safe’ stated that a Lebanese who lodged at Hotel Du Golf in the commercial city showed symptoms of the dreaded COVID-19 and called on the state government to not only lock the hotel down, but also track and quarantine all guests and staff who may have come in contact with the foreigner.
Conducting newsmen round the isolation centre located within Amachara Specialist Hospital, Umuahia, one of the two centres presently designated in Abia, the state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Joe Osuji, explained that there was no guest in the hotel having the Coronavirus or a case of the disease anywhere in the state.
Osuji said the foreigner, one Mr Jareed Boyd Betten, a South African who is an engineer working for a retail outlet in the city, checked into Hotel Du Gulf over a month ago and had been in the hotel since then without travelling out.
The commissioner who revealed that he personally visited the hotel to find out things by himself and even met the foreigner, added that the news was fake, written to put confusion in the minds of residents of the city and Abia State as a whole and urged the general public to discountenance it.
Dr. Osuji however assured that with the isolation centres put in place, the state government was prepared to contain any eventual case or cases of coronavirus in the state.
Also denying any case of covid-19 in Abia, the state Commissioner for Information, Chief John Okiyi-Kalu said the report was politically motivated, done to undermine the efforts of government in checkmating the spread of the disease.
While explaining that Abia State government made attempts to procure testing kits but was advised by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to shelve the idea as according to them most of the testing kits in circulation today are fake. Okiyi-Kalu called on the Federal Government to establish a testing centre in Abia to serve the entire South East.
He said at present there was no testing centre for the virus in the South East as the nearest centre a test could be done is in Irrua, Edo State which he said is about 300 kiliometres from the state. (The Nation)
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