Ebola: Nigeria Has 54 Primary Contacts Now, Many Are In Quarantine, Says NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) on Monday said that it has identified another contact linked to the confirmed case of the recent Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, increasing the number of primary contacts to 54. The Director-General of the agency, Dr. Jide Idris, disclosed this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, identifying the new contact as an e-hailing driver.

“So as it is now, we’ve had — yesterday it was 54, right? One has left. The index case has left, so we had 53. “Today, we got one more suspected case contact, who actually was the Uber driver who actually drove her again before to the first hospital. That information we got later,” he said. Idris explained that many of the contacts were in quarantine, including six who self-quarantined at home.

“So we still have 54 contacts, primary contacts. What we do is that we follow up with these people because a lot of them are in quarantine right now somewhere in Abuja, here, about 40-something of them.” “We have six that are home, self-quarantined because the risks appear low. But they monitor them, call them, take their temperature, morning, evening, just to ensure that there are no changes in clinical situation.

“And one or two cases like that we had. He changes. And we had to do, we had to test them again. And the three of them again today were tested, and all the three of them turned out negative,” he added. The NCDC chief also said efforts were ongoing to identify the secondary contacts. More to follow…