NIGERIA today announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The case is an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria, and returned from Milan, Italy, to Lagos, Nigeria, on February 25, 2020,” said Health Minister Osagie Ehanire on Twitter.

“The patient is clinically stable, with no serious symptoms, and is being managed at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos.”

Prior to the case in Nigeria, just two cases had surfaced across all of Africa, in Egypt and Algeria, a tally that puzzled health specialists, given the continent’s close economic ties with China, where the disease originated.

The World Health Organisation has warned that African health systems are ill-equipped to respond to the deadly coronavirus outbreak should cases start to proliferate in the continent. – AFP, February 28, 2020.