Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), has said that no state in the country is COVID-19 free.

Ihekweazu said this today June 22 while speaking at the daily briefing of the presidential task force in Abuja.

He said a state can only talk about being COVID-19 free when it is testing and have the effective tool to fight the disease.

In his words;

“No state in Nigeria is COVID-19 free. No country in the world is COVID-19 free. That is why we have to keep doing this work we are doing, testing people, finding out if they have it. Even if some of us are lucky and get away with having asymptomatic infections, we have to test more.

We can only talk about a state being disease-free when we have an effective tool to fight the disease. That will come when we have a vaccine. Until then, there is no easy way to say this. We have to keep pushing for these preventive measures. We have to develop our laboratory capability to test. Either you start testing now or you start testing later. But eventually, we will all test. That’s for sure.”

In Nigeria, Cross Rivers is the only state where no case of COVID-19 has been officially confirmed.