The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says the country is not under “serious threat for now” for the , Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV).  ,
The NCDC has assured Nigerians that the country is safe and that there is no reason to be alarmed despite the concerns that have been raised by the virus’s spread in some places around the world.
“Let me say, there’s no serious threat for now. That’s one. Two, this HMPV virus, it’s not a new virus. It’s just that it’s not well-known. But it’s been implicated in many respiratory infections over the years, over the countries, especially in children, and elderly people”, the NCDC Director-General Jide Idris said on Thursday’s edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily
“Just like the normal flu, old virus or influenza, respiratory virus, it’s just one of those causes of respiratory problems”.
READ ALSO: What You Need To Know About HMPV
We ‘Learned our lessons,’ we said.
The NCDC boss claimed that the nation is closely monitoring the situation and is at a high alert because there haven’t been any reported cases in Nigeria yet.
On the breakfast show, he said, “We are in a monitoring and alert phase, and we take instructions from WHO everywhere because we are supposed to report cases like this, any case, any problem to WHO so that they can alert every other country to get prepared,” he said.
“That’s precisely what we are doing in Nigeria. We’ve experienced some major problems – we had Ebola, and we had COVID. With those two, we developed some capabilities. We created infrastructure and drew our conclusions. So we’ve got public health infrastructures. To avoid having to start running helter-skelter, you need to put these things in place in anticipation of things like this.
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