02/28/2020 - 8:30
- Clarín.com
- World
Nigeria confirmed on Thursday its first case of the new coronavirus in the capital, Lagos, as well as the Netherlands and New Zealand, demonstrating the borderless progress of the Covid-19 epidemic, which originated in Wuhan, China, and which has already cost the life to 2,788 (only in Chinese soil), according to the latest balance of the sanitary authorities of the Asian country.
New Zealand confirmed on Friday the first case of a coronavirus infected in the country, a New Zealander in his 60s who was recently in Iran and who had been negative twice.
The patient is admitted to an Auckland hospital, which he arrived on Wednesday night and where he was placed in isolation, while evolving favorably , the director general of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, told the media.
The health authorities indicated that three relatives who had direct contact with the infected were also placed in isolation, while investigating the places within the country where he was and other people with whom he had contact on his return, including passengers of the same plane in the who traveled after stopping in Bali (Indonesia).
In the island nations of the South Pacific, where no case has been confirmed so far, a series of measures have been implemented to prevent the virus from accessing these countries that have a poor health system.
The Ministry of Health of Samoa reported that travelers from China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Italy or Thailand, among other countries, have to spend a quarantine in a third country "free of the coronavirus" before traveling to the ocean nation.
"The mandatory inspection of all passengers arriving in Samoa is now in effect at all ports of entry," says the government department.
For its part, the Government of Fiji extended Thursday for another 14 days the travel restrictions previously imposed on travelers from mainland China and also noted that tourists who have recently been to Italy, Iran and the South Korean cities of Daegu and Cheongdo They will not be able to enter the country.
The measures come after Thursday's announcement in Australia, where 23 cases have been confirmed, of the activation of a national emergency plan in response to a potential COVID-19 pandemic.
Nigeria
The Ministry of Health of Nigeria has confirmed on Thursday its first case of coronavirus in the capital of the country through the social network Twitter, which is also the first registered in the sub-Saharan Africa area, the third in the continent after those infected with Egypt and Algeria.
That the virus has reached that region worries because the countries there have poor health systems.
"The case is an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and who had returned from Milan (Italy) to Lagos (Nigeria) on February 25," according to the text, which ensures that the patient is "clinically stable, without serious symptoms. ", adds the official statement.
Nigeria thus joins the more than 83,000 confirmed cases worldwide, 78,824 of them in China; with 2,788 dead in the Asian giant and 70 outside that country, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
"The Government of Nigeria, through the Ministry of Health, has strengthened measures to ensure that the outbreak in Nigeria is controlled and contained quickly," said the Nigerian Government, which already said last January that it had strengthened sanitary controls at points of entry to the country, like airports.
However, the Nigerian Senate (upper house) on Thursday criticized the federal government for not doing enough to control passengers entering the country through its airports and seaports.
Netherlands
The Elisabeth TweeSteden hospital where the case was admitted in Tilburg, the Netherlands. / EFE
The case registered in the Netherlands is a 56-year-old man who had recently been in the Italian region of Lombardy, one of the areas most affected by the disease in this European country.
This person has been quarantined at a hospital in Tilburg, in the south of the Netherlands, as noted by Health Minister Bruno Bruins, who has announced that an investigation will be carried out to define how many people could have been in contact with the patient, according to the local newspaper 'De Telegraaf'.
With information from DPA, EFE and AFP