Lai Mohammed denies report that Chinese doctor has tested positive for COVID-19

Some reports on social media claimed that one of the Chinese doctors who recently arrived in Nigeria had tested positive for the COVID-19. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has dismissed these reports as entirely false.

Mr Mohammed, who is also a member of the Presidential Task Force (PTF), stated this on Wednesday, during the PTF’a daily media briefing.

He said,

“This morning, there was a message that went viral, to the effect that one of the Chinese doctors tested positive and that news was supposed to have emanated from the Twitter handle of the federal government.

“I want to say, to the best of our knowledge here, there’s no such thing.

“I’ve also just received two hate dramas and other fake news while I was sitting here, which I’ve been unable to open. But we will continue to debunk fake news and we’ll try our best to timely give you information about the COVID-19, either through our daily press briefings or through the website of the NCDC and the task force”.

News that the Chinese medical experts were coming into the country had split opinion, with the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) describing the intervention as an embarrassment to its members.

The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has also asked Nigerians to hold President Muhammadu Buhari responsible for an upsurge in COVID-19 infections and deaths following the arrival of the Chinese medical team in the country.

However, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 explained that the Chinese Doctors have only come to complement ongoing efforts to tackle the pandemic.

Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Mr Boss Mustapha, stressed that the coming of the Chinese Doctors is part of China’s cooperate social responsibility initiated by CCECC, a company with a total volume of infrastructural contracts in Nigeria worth over N10 billion.

Mr Mustapha who is also Secretary-General of the Federation, appealed to Nigeria’s medical professionals to see the arrival of the Chinese Doctors, as an extension of positive developments in the field of medicine.