Monrovia – The headquarters of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), the body tasked with detecting and responding to outbreaks and public health threats in a timely manner, will remain closed for a few more days after two more of its staffers tested positive for the deadly Coronavirus.
In an email to staffers Thursday, NPHIL’s hierarchy noted:
“Per the directive of the Director General, this email is to update the NPHIL staff that after the IPC team conducted their risk assessment, twelve (12) staff were found high risk. They were asked to stay home for self-quarantine and get tested. Unfortunately, two (2) of the staff tested positive. The IPC team under Mr. Philip Bemah has recommended that nineteen (19) individuals from the Environmental Health Division are to be quarantined for the period of 14 days while being tested. In this regard the NPHIL building was fumigated today again for the second time it was closed until Monday, April 20, 2020. Field teams are to joint Montserrado County Health Team until Monday, April 20th
On Tuesday, staffers were notified that one of their staffers had deceived the institution by using a fake name to undergo testing for the virus at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville.
“This is to inform the NPHIL staff that Mr. Benjamin Soko has tested positive of COVID19. He was tested at the SKD under the alias Benjamin C. Tokofo. As a result of him using an alias name, administration found out the true identity of Mr. Soko on the evening of Sunday, April 12, 2020,” the management informed staffers in an email.
An onsite sample collection coordinator told FrontPageAfrica this week that Soko “tricked” the lab technicians into collecting his specimen under a fake name.
“When he [Soko] came here in the morning, I met him around 8:30 and told him that he should wait so we could do our set up,” explained Sowillie Lomax, a lab technologist with the Ministry of Health who now coordinates sample collection at the SKD Complex center. “But then he [Soko] met one of the girls who were assigned here, and I told her that we have a staff here from NPHIL and you can talk to him to know the details of his case.
“Later those girls came back and told me that he did not meet the case definition for testing, because all the questions that they asked him he denied all – that he never had contact with anybody, but he just came to do his own test.”
Lomax said Mr. Soko was then denied the test and was further requested to seek permission from his office before they could render him the test. But because she identified him as a staff of NPHIL, she requested that he be given a privilege and then asked that his sample be taken.
The infections at NPHIL comes as Liberia’s confirmed cases increased to 73 Thursday, with the announcement of 14 additional cases and six deaths to date.
According to the latest Situation report from the NPHIL, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Montserrado County continues to evolve rapidly, with additional new confirmed cases reported and an associated upsurge in incidence cases reported in the county.