The Assistant Minister of Health, Mohamed Abdullahi, warned that the country could be on the verge of an increased number of undetected COVID-19 cases after a person without any travel history tested positive to the disease.
Somalia’s health ministry confirmed this new case on Friday. Consequently, Adbullahi believes that the virus might have spread undetected to an unknown number of Somalis in the Horn of Africa nation.
On Friday, the Minister of Health, Dr. Fawziya Abikar, announced two new cases. She said one of the patients was a Somali national. The other was a foreigner. Consequently, she confirmed that the country now has seven cases of COVID-19 with no death.
United Nations Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) clarified that the foreigner was an employee working for a private firm that the organization often contracted to perform various projects. With that, UN now says two of its contractors have tested positive for COVID-19 in Somalia.
Dr. Abikar has indicated that the government has started tracing the contacts with who the two latest patients may have been in touch. It is not clear how the Mogadishu case with no travel history contracted the novel virus. All previous cases were travelers arriving back to Somalia.