No state is COVID-19 free in Nigeria,says Chikwe Ihekweazu

The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC),
Chikwe Ihekweazu, has said that there is no state in the country that is entirely free from COVID-19.

Ihekweazu said this on Monday, June 22 while speaking at the daily briefing of the presidential task force in Abuja.

He said that a state can only talk about being COVID-19 free when it is testing and has the effective tool to fight the disease. In his words,

“No state in Nigeria is COVID-19 free. No country in the world is COVID-19 free.

That is why we have to keep doing this work we are doing, testing people, finding out if they have it.

Even if some of us are lucky and get away with having asymptomatic infections, we have to test more.

We can only talk about a state being disease-free when we have an effective tool to fight the disease.

That will come when we have a vaccine. Until then, there is no easy way to say this.

We have to keep pushing for these preventive measures. We have to develop our laboratory capability to test.

Either you start testing now or you start testing later. But eventually, we will all test. That’s for sure.”

In Nigeria, Cross Rivers is the only state where no case of COVID-19 has been officially confirmed.