Nigeria Imposes Port Restrictions to Prevent COVID-19 Spread
LAGOS, March 26 (Reuters)– Nigeria will just permit freight vessels that have actually gone to sea for greater than 2 weeks to dock in its ports to avoid the spread of coronavirus, President Muhammadu Buhari claimed on Thursday.
Health professionals are afraid an extensive break out in Africa’s most populated nation of 200 million individuals which might bewilder its creaking medical care system.
Nigeria has actually shut its land boundaries as well as worldwide flight terminals in the recently to suppress the spread of the infection.
Buhari claimed on Twitter he had actually released an instruction that “only cargo vessels that have been at sea for more than 14 days be allowed to dock in our ports, after the crew have been tested and confirmed disease-free by the port health authorities.”
Earlier, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) claimed 14 brand-new coronavirus situations had actually been determined, taking the complete number to 65. Six of the brand-new situations were discovered on one vessel.
The head of state claimed the brand-new constraints would certainly not relate to ships bring oil as well as gas items due to the fact that there was very little human get in touch with on such vessels.
The constraints run the risk of producing supply chain issues.
Manufacturers claimed today the port wait time for ships had actually leapt to as lengthy as 90 days. With flight terminals near worldwide trips as well as restricting team accessibility, air freight distributions might come to be significantly undependable. (Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; Additonal coverage by Libby George; editing and enhancing by Ed Osmond)
( c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019.