Niger launches manhunt for fleeing COVID-19 positive driver

The Niger state government has launched a manhunt for a driver who tested positive to COVID-19, according to the state Commissioner for Health and Hospital Services, Mohammed Makunsidi, who raised the alarm.

Makunsidi said the COVID-19 positive driver had escaped from the isolation centre where he was being managed in Bida area of the state, explaining that the manhunt for the man has intensified.

Makunsidi stated this on Tuesday in a press briefing in Minna, adding that officials of his ministry have been deployed to track down the escaped suspect and take him back to the isolation centre.

He said: “For Bida, we heard of the arrival of a driver or somebody that is said to have tested positive to coronavirus who was being managed at an isolation centre. We heard that he escaped into Bida, so we are after him now.

“Our members of the state task force on COVID -19 and officials of ministry of health and hospital services are in Bida area of the state to locate him and make sure he does what the Nigeria Centre for Decease Control has asked him to do.”

He said that two other persons who arrived Kontagora area of the state from the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada have been quarantined and are currently undergoing medical tests for the virus because they are from presumed areas of infection.

According to the commissioner, another man from Kagara area of the state has also been taken to an isolation centre in Minna due to outcries from community members that he may have come in contact with Chinese nationals working at Zungeru hydro-power plant even though he has not travelled out of Minna for the past one year.

He said that the man is alleged to be having fever and sour throat and that this triggered the fear by the community and the suspicious that he had the coronavirus.

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“Ordinarily this does not fit into test definition. But, nevertheless, because of the outcry of the community, we have to take out the man into our isolation centre at Minna General Hospital and we are testing him for coronavirus”, he explained.

Also speaking, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) and Chairman of the state Task force on COVID-19, Ahmed Matane said his members will redouble efforts at tracing all those believed to have made contact with positive index cases.

He lamented that at the national level, there were still over 6, 000 people who have made contact with COVID-19 positive cases, but cannot be traced.

“These 6,000 have the potential to infect triple that number. In Niger see, we have been very prompt and we will not allow such people to mingle with our people”, he said.