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26% of emergency calls a hoax – NCDC

Published

4 years ago

July 13, 2020

The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control says 26 per cent of the calls its emergency centres received last week were ‘hoax’ calls.

The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekwazu, said this during the briefing of the Covid-19 Presidential Task Force on Monday..

Ihekweazu said while some called to find out when the Covid-19 Madagascar drug would be made available to members of the public, others said they were only calling to see if the emergency lines were actually functional.

The NCDC boss said such calls clog the phone lines and make it difficult for genuine cases to contact the agency.

He said, “The quality of the call centres have improved but also as the disease has progressed, we’ve had new challenges. About 26 per cent of all our calls last week were hoax calls. So, one in four per cent of all the calls that the NCDC receives are hoax calls.

“People just call for one reason or the other to check if you are there, to challenge you, to ask you about the Madagascar cure or something like that. So, these are the challenges we have; they clog the lines but we will keep trying to manage that.”

Ihekweazu admitted that the turnaround time for the results of Covid-19 tests were slow but added that those who had not been contacted by the relevant authorities after being tested should assume that they are negative.