The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
Rising cases of unexplained deaths have put Nigeria’s second-biggest city of Kano at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa’s most populous country.
Local news reports citing cemetery workers that emerged last month revealed a spike in mysterious deaths in the city with an estimated 8 million residents. Kano state Governor Abdullahi Ganduje initially blamed ailments such as diabetes and malaria. President Muhammadu Buhari extended the lockdown in the city, while loosening restrictions on the biggest urban area, Lagos, and the capital, Abuja. An emergency team he sent to assess the situation pointed to the pandemic.
“Our careful observation and understanding indicated that coronavirus is the cause of the mass deaths,†Nasiru Gwarzo, the head of the presidential task force, told reporters.
While fewer than 50,000 of the approximately 3.5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide are in Africa, the speed with which the situation unraveled in Kano has heightened concern the virus has spread undetected in other crowded cities on the continent.
Some hospitals in Kano have closed because health workers fear contracting the disease as they lack protective equipment, while others are taking in an increasing number of people with symptoms of the virus, said Isa Abubakar, the director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Research at Kano’s Bayero University. People with other conditions, either unwilling or unable to seek medical care, are dying at home.
“This disease has spread among almost every strata of our society,†Abubakar said.
Lagos remains the hardest-hit part of Nigeria, recording 1,100 confirmed coronavirus cases as of May 04, about a third of the nation’s total and three times as many as in Kano. But there isn’t enough testing capacity in the city, which is a trade hub for northern Nigeria and the Sahel, an arid area on the southern fringe of the Sahara.
After Kano recorded its first case on April 11, testing was slow to gain traction, with the lone laboratory testing for the virus closed for five days after one of the workers was infected.