COVID 19: 310 travellers coming to Nigeria test positive
By Titilola Amao
No fewer that 310 people coming to Nigeria in the past two weeks have tested positive to COVID-19, Prof Oyewale Tomori, a virologist has said. This has raised concerns about the icreasing cases of travellers who fail to isolate during their visit to Nigeria.
Tomori who also spoke to TVC continental during the iconic weekly Journalists Hangout on Sunday said NIgeria will be making a great impact if inbound travellers are tested on arrival in the country.
He said Nigeria has not shown effective committment in the battle against COVID-19 warning that the new Delta variant may wreck havoc on Nigeria is adequate steps are not taken. Prof Tomori also said he lost a friend, a Professor to COVID 19 in the past few days. He urged the Federal Government to rise up to the occassion
He said, “While I am sad, I will not say I am surprised, this was bound to happen. I am particularly concerned about Akwa-Ibom State. I have been monitoring their figures these past days and I have not been comfortable, the sad thing about it is that they are not even on red alert.
“Now to the infected outbound passengers, this situation is actually worse than inbound passengers testing positive. For inbound passengers, they can still be curtailed at the airport but for people, who are travelling out of the country, definitely someone must have infected them, they would have also infected other people.
“The people they have infected will not know they have been infected and hence they will go and infect other people. Will the Federal Government do contact tracing? It is not just about saying these are the number of outbound passengers that tested positive, what are we doing about those they have infected? The truth is if not that they wanted to travel out they would not have taken tests so imagine the number of asymptomatic individuals who are also going around?”
