Nigeria: NCDC says emergency phase of this year's Lassa fever outbreak is over

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that the emergency phase of this year's Lassa fever outbreak is over, according to a news report by Daily Trust.

In a statement released on April 28, NCDC said this followed a successive decline in cases below the emergency threshold and an epidemiological review carried out by it and the World Health Organisation.

The report says Lassa fever case count had significantly declined in the last three weeks and had now dropped below levels considered to be a national emergency.

According to NCDC, there was a decline in cases of Lassa fever from 23% in 2019 to 19% in 2020, adding that it also supported peer to peer training by creating exchange programs between states, treatment centers, and laboratories.

On January 24, NCDC has declared a Lassa fever outbreak and activated a national Lassa fever Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in response to an increase in Lassa fever cases at the beginning of the year, exceeding the threshold for an outbreak.

Since the beginning of the outbreak, 979 confirmed cases and 188 deaths had been recorded from 27 states including the Federal Capital Territory as of April 19, 2020.

The previous month, NCDC had reported that 11 more death due to the ongoing Lassa fever outbreak. Although the new coronavirus outbreak has overshadowed the news of the Lassa outbreak in the country, Nigeria is still monitoring and responding to the disease.