Desmond Mgboh, Kano
The Kano State Government has commenced a house-to-house community sampling of cases of COVID 19 in the state.
The exercise was announced by the Coordinator, Kano State Technical Response Team on COVID 19, Dr Tijjani Husseni, during a COVID-19 briefing at the Government House on Thursday
He told his audience that: ‘We are no longer waiting for people to call us, but we are going out actively to search for these cases and take their samples.’
Dr Tijjani added that ‘the pilot is going on right now as I am speaking in two wards within Kano metropolis. They are Zango ward of Kano Municipal Local Government Area and in Dorayi Ward of Gwale Local Government Area.
‘This pilot would allow us to go out en masse and actively search for these cases. This is a departure from what we had before when we do selective testing.’
Dr Tijjani explained that the community sampling exercise would enable the technical response team to quickly identify, isolate, test and treat as many cases as possible with a view to ending of the outbreak in the state.
The state government, he added, was working tirelessly to ensure the full resumption of all the health activities provided by both the primary and secondary health facilities in the state ‘after ensuring that we put in place all the necessary prevention and control mechanism in this facilities in these facilities.’
He appealed to the various security agencies implementing the lockdown in the state to allow health workers unimpeded access to their primary areas of work upon the presentation of valid identity cards.
On the current statistics of COVID-19 in the state, he disclosed that as at yesterday, Kano had a total 970 cases, 607 of which were active, while adding that 318 of the confirmed cases have been discharged from the isolation centres, with 45 of the total cases dead.
He revealed that the confirmed cases were distributed across 30 local government in the state, with nine local government areas contributing 90 per cent of the cases.
He said that Taurani local government area has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state, with 28.5 per cent, Nasarwa followed with 19.7 per cent of the cases, Gwale with 7.8 per cent of the cases, Dala with 7.2 per cent, Kumbotose with 6.6 per cent while Kano Municipal has a total of 5.2 per cent of the recorded COVID-19 cases in the state.
