Coronavirus: Nigeria reports first case of the outbreak
Nigeria has announced the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The case is an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and returned from Milan, Italy to Lagos, Nigeria on the 25th of February 2020,” Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said in a statement on Twitter.
Nigeria is only one of four countries which declared their first cases of the coronavirus overnight, including New Zealand and Lithuania. More than a dozen countries have recorded their first cases in the past 48 hours, as the W.H.O.’s director general said the battle against the disease had reached a ‘decisive point.’
England’s chief medical officer has also warned it is “just a matter of time” until coronavirus spreads in the UK, as the number of confirmed cases in the country jumped to 16.
“This virus has pandemic potential,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization on Thursday. “We are actually in a very delicate situation in which the outbreak can go in any direction based on how we handle it.”
Source: Independent, The Telegraph
