63-year-old Nigerian pathologist, Olumide Okunuga, has died of coronavirus, the doctor who lived in Italy, contracted the disease during a visit to Canada.
This was made known by the minister of state for health, Adeleke Mamora, while addressing journalists in Abuja on Monday while giving an update on the COVID-19 situation in the country.
He said;
“We must be conscious of not being complacent, the price to pay for complacency is huge. I have heard people say that the black man’s gene is resistant and so COVID-19 is not for us,” he said.
“Don’t forget, some black men even from Africa, even from Nigeria have died, unfortunately. We heard the story of one doctor who lived in Italy, a Nigerian, a black man.
So we should not get carried away. There are a lot of things known about COVID-19 and there are still things unknown. We have to be very careful about believing claims that are yet to be fully validated.”
Last week, another Nigerian doctor in his 30s died of the virus in the United Kingdom.
In other news, the result of the person suspected to have been infected with coronavirus in Enugu State turned out negative, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) disclosed on Sunday.
The health agency on its twitter handle @NCDCgov said “laboratory result of the patient in Enugu suspected to have COVID19 is negative.”