The Federal Government has said that none of the 15 Chinese medical experts who arrived the country last week Wednesday tested positive for the COVID-19.
A team of 15 medics from China, comprising doctors and nurses, arrived Nigeria last Wednesday with medical supplies worth about $1.5m.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who said this on Wednesday in Abuja at the 12th joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, added that such rumour like the other fake news on COVID-19 are regrettable.
He also dismissed reports that members of the National Assembly had shared a N500m of N700m fund each to help in the COVID-19 efforts.
According to him, the task force had been devoting as much energy in the fight against COVID-19 to also dispelling fake news, to distract the efforts of government in fighting the pandemic.
READ: Covid-19: 7 in 10 Nigerians against ‘importation of Chinese doctors’
He urged Nigerians to discard reports about the government’s efforts to beat back COVID-19, which did not emanate from the daily briefings or the website of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
READ: Can foreign Chinese doctors practice in Nigeria legally?
“Whether members of the National Assembly are sharing N700 million, just as we are trying to fight and contain Coronavirus, a lot of energy is also being expended in fighting fake news. To the best of my knowledge, I am not aware that any such money has been given to members of the National Assembly, but I know that fake news is not abating.
“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.”
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