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  • NEWS FEATURE

Nigeria responds to COVID-19; first case detected in sub-Saharan Africa

A seasoned public-health institute puts Nigeria in a good position to respond to COVID-19, although there are area-specific challenges to be addressed. Nature Medicine reports from Nigeria.
  1. Paul Adepoju

    1. Paul Adepoju is a Freelance journalist reporting from Lagos, Nigeria.

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Temperature gun

A Nigerian security officer holds an infrared thermometer, with which he checks the body temperatures of visitors before granting them access to a co-working space in Abuja, Nigeria. Credit: Paul Adepoju/Nature Medicine

Around 1 AM on Friday 28 January 2020, Nigeria announced sub-Saharan Africa’s first confirmed case of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, and the confirmation led to activation of the country’s National Coronavirus Emergency Operation Centre. Nigeria’s quick mobilization of resources and manpower to combat the Ebola virus disease in 2014, led by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), received praise from the international community and from the World Health Organization (WHO). The outbreak, which caused 15,000 confirmed cases and over 9,000 suspected cases in West Africa, was controlled in just 92 days―a “piece of world-class epidemiological detective work,” the WHO stated at the time.

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Nature Medicine 26, 444-448 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41591-020-00004-2

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