Nigeria’s health authorities have reported the first confirmed case of the strain of coronavirus known as Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Commissioner for Health for Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, has said that an Italian citizen who entered Nigeria on February 25 from Milan on a business trip fell ill the next day.

Commissioner Akin Abayomi said the man was transferred to Lagos State Biosecurity Facilities for isolation and testing. The patient was clinically stable with no serious symptoms, and was being managed at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos.

Commissioner Abayomi added that officials were working to identify all of the man’s contacts since he arrived in Nigeria.

A woman wearing a face mask in Nigeria
Nigeria’s health authorities have reported the country’s first case of Covid-19 in Lagos (AP/ Sunday Alamba)

Nigerian health officials have been strengthening measures to ensure that any outbreak in Lagos is controlled and contained quickly, Mr Abayomi said in a statement.

“I wish to assure all Lagosians and Nigerians that we have been strengthening our preparedness since the first confirmation of cases in China. We will use all the resources made available by the state and the federal government to respond to this case,” he said.

He urged all residents of Lagos, a teeming city of 21 million, to take measures such as keeping their distance from people who are coughing and washing their hands regularly.

Cases of the virus were already confirmed in Egypt and Algeria in north Africa.

Nigeria is one of 13 African countries that the World Health Organisation classified as high priority in this outbreak because of direct links to China or a high number of visitors from there.

Men wearing face masks in Nigeria
Nigeria is one of 13 African countries that the World Health Organisation classified as high priority (AP/Sunday Alamba)

Trudie Lang, director of The Global Health Network at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and the University of Oxford said detection of further cases in Africa will be challenging as more inexpensive testing kits are needed for on-the-spot diagnosis.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) has rushed to train its 54 member countries in testing for Covid-19. Just two countries had the capability at the beginning of this month. Now more than two dozen have it, including Nigeria.

Most African airlines with direct flights to China quickly suspended them, and countries activated surveillance and quarantine measures.

Many had experience with trying to prevent the spread of the devastating West Africa Ebola outbreak that ended in 2016, and global health experts now point to that as a sign of preparedness in this outbreak. The ACDC was created in response to the Ebola outbreak, and many countries established public health institutes.

Nigeria was praised for quickly containing cases when the Ebola outbreak reached there in 2014 after an infected man from Liberia landed in Lagos. Nineteen people were infected and seven died, but officials were praised for effective public awareness campaigns and strong leadership.

“We have worked very hard to strengthen our systems in preparedness for this outbreak,” the director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Chikwe Ihekweazu, tweeted.

Nigeria is also currently dealing with an outbreak of Lassa fever — an indication of the health challenges that many African nations face.