The Lagos State Government has debunked claims of new cases of the Ebola Virus Disease in Nigeria.
It therefore urged Nigerians to discountenance the rumour claiming that three people, who just returned from Liberia, died of the disease and infected 12 other persons.
The government, however, confirmed that two Nigerian volunteers, returning from Liberia, were taken to the Mainland Hospital in Yaba and had remained negative to the EVD for more than two weeks.
Speaking at an inter-ministerial press briefing on Tuesday, state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, said the state government had traced the sources of the rumour to a website and a twitter account.
According to the commissioner, the claims emanated from www.mercyjblog.com/2015/04/breaking-ebola-returns-to-nigeria-after.html and @iChexo on the 9th and 12th of April respectively.
He added that the state government believed that the authors, whom he said would be made to face the music, “simply wanted to generate traffic to their websites, which would appear successfully achieved.’’
Faulting the claims, Idris said the outcome of verification efforts by the state government had shown that the alerts from the sources were false.
Idris said, “On the April 9, 2015, there was a rumour in the social media on the return of Ebola Virus Disease to Nigeria, killing three and infecting 12 other persons. According to the rumour, the deceased were returnees from Liberia, and one of them was reportedly taken to an undisclosed hospital in Lagos.
“The propagator of the EVD rumour failed to give information on the date of arrival of the victims in Nigeria, the port(s) of entry as well as the name of the health facility/laboratory in Lagos where the confirmatory diagnosis of EVD was made.
“The second rumour, concerning two Chinese visitors from Sierra Leone was posted on Twitter (@iChexo) on April 12, 2015, claiming that the two Chinese died of EVD at LUTH same day.
“Investigation carried out at LUTH confirmed that to be completely untrue.”
