The Presidential Taskforce PTF on COVID-19 has raised an alarm that some International travelers who are COVID-19 positive, are coming into the country with fake COVID-19 PCR negative results.

Recall that the Federal government announced that one of the protocols to be obeyed as the international airspace reopens is for all inbound passengers to undergo a COVID0-19 test 72 hours before arriving Nigeria and that the result must be negative.

However, the National Co-Ordinator of the PTF, Dr Sani Aliyu, today said fraudulent activities have been noticed in some of the test results presented on arrival. According to Sani, some travellers arrived in the country with negative COVID-19 test results but were later discovered to be COVID-19 positive. He stated this when he and other members of the taskforce appeared before the Joint Senate Committee on Health and Aviation on the testing procedures following the reopening of the International airspace.

“When we started the evacuation flights, the arrangement then was that people coming into the country will need to have a negative COVID-19 PCR result, with the test validity put at the time in seven days.

There were indications from some specific countries where we had up to 40% of the passengers in the single flight coming in with a negative COVID-19 PCR result and subsequently being tested and found positive” he said.

Sani said the test results presented by inbound travellers can no longer be trusted. He said 13 countries have been identified to have travelers with fake COVID-19 test results and the Federal government has written to the embassies to correct this anomaly.