A new case of Coronavirus has been registered in Ekiti state, Nigeria, raising the number of confirmed cases in the country to eight.

On Wednesday, the minister of health, Osagie Ehanire, announced that the country had registered five new cases of the virus, with four patients in Lagos and one in Ekiti.

Details about the case in Ekiti were later shared in a statement released by the Ekiti state government on Twitter, disclosing that the patient, a 38-year-old Nigerian man tested positive to the virus and upon further probe, was identified to have been in contact with an index case.

In the statement signed by the state’s commissioner of health, Mojisola Yaya-Kayode, the patient was reported to have driven the index case, an American man who came into the country from Virginia, United States, on March 3 through Muritala Mohammed International airport.

According to the statement, the 27-year-old caucasian American man travelled with his caregiver, a 31-year-old Nigerian woman, from Lagos to Ibadan where they both spent two weeks before heading to Ekiti on March 13.

Upon arriving in Ekiti, the index case fell ill and was taken to a private hospital before he was transferred to a tertiary hospital where he was declared dead, the statement disclosed.

It was gathered that the hospital alerted the government who then commenced contact tracing and identified the driver who has now tested positive to the virus.

The caregiver who is said to be in an isolation centre in Ekiti has been reported to have tested negative to the virus but the government has stated that a second test would be carried out before she is either discharged or admitted.

So far, Nigeria has confirmed eight cases but only one of the cases was said to have tested negative after initially testing positive and being asymptomatic.

In arresting the spread of the virus, the Federal Government has placed travel ban on 13 countries, all of which have at least 1,000 cases of COVID-19

Globally, coronavirus has infected up to 200,000 persons and killed over 8,000 people around the world.

There is still no known cure or vaccine to eliminate the virus, which has now been recorded in every continent except Antarctica.