COVID-19: Kano raises the alarm over new variant

Kano state Commissioner for Health Dr. Aminu Ibrahim Tsanya has said Kano is currently experiencing gradual increase of COVID-19 cases with the new variant of the virus, with high infectivity, disease severity and virulence as from 21st January to 3rd February 2021.

Speaking on the new development at a press conference in Kano Thursday, Tsanyawa stated that additional 3,442 initial samples were tested with 478 new COVID-19 cases diagnosed and 12 deaths, thus bringing the total deaths in Kano to 84 adding that over the last few weeks the sample positivity rate has increased to 13.8% compared to the overall positivity of 4%.

According to him, areas of human traffic and overcrowding are the super-spreading points such as public areas like banks, offices, shopping malls, restaurants, markets and other small businesses joints stressing that for apt compliance to be entrenched, the State Ministry of Health has developed guidelines and protocols to provide information to the general public to prevent infection of Covid-19.

To this end he said mandatory facilities must be in place at all organizations and premises and accessible to everyone.

The new guidelines he added, include; the provision of hand washing facilities with running water and soap and a good drainage system or alcohol based hand rubs/sanitizer and the provision of waste management facilities in addition to using facemasks and maintaining physical distance 2 metres apart.

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