The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has said about 40 health workers in the country have tested positive for coronavirus.
Ehanire, who stated this during the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 media briefing in Abuja on Thursday, urged all health workers to remain vigilant.
Also, the Chairman of the Lagos State branch of the Medical Guild, Dr Oluwajimi Sodipo, said three members of the association at the Alimosho General Hospital and the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, had tested positive for COVID-19.
Sodipo, in an interview with one of our correspondents on Thursday, said the three doctors had been admitted to different isolation facilities in Lagos for treatment.
He said the medical conditions of the three doctors, who had been exposed to COVID-19 cases, were stable.
Sodipo said this as the Nigerian Medical Association stated that its members had been complaining about a shortage of personal protective equipment in hospitals.
This, it said, made doctors and other health workers to contract COVID-19.
The health minister had on Wednesday said the Kano molecular laboratory suspended testing because some of its workers tested positive for the virus.
But at the PTF media briefing on Thursday, Ehnaire lauded all COVID-19 frontline health workers .
He, however, advised them to be cautious and use the PPE to guard against infections.
He stated, “Please do not treat any patient without using the PPE. Frontline health workers must undertake refresher training at intervals. This warning has become necessary due of the number of health workers who have tested positive for COVID-19. They are over 40 now and they have been quarantined. Remain vigilant in the line of duty and maintain a high index of suspicion for COVID-19.”
The minister added 13 laboratories in the country had the capacity to test 1,500 samples per day.