LAGOS State government has refuted rumours of fresh cases of the deadly Ebola virus disease outbreak in Lagos State.

Reacting to messages being circulated on the social media, the state government, at a press conference held at Alausa, Ikeja, on Tuesday, pointed out that there was no fresh case of the dreaded Ebola disease in the state.

In his remarks, the state Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, said on April 9, a rumour was published on a social media platform about the return of the deadly disease in Lagos.

He further said the “fraudulent” information further indicated that the disease had been able to kill three persons and infect 12 others.

He said findings revealed that the rumour was generated from two different websites, explaining that the government had immediately swung into action to verify the source, quality and viability.

However, after discovering the fraudulent nature of the reports, the commissioner disclosed that the government had also embarked on its own social media campaign to debunk the news.

Idris added that the second rumour concerned two fictitious Chinese visitors, who were said to have come into the country from Sierra Leone, a prominent Ebola-endemic country.

According to him, the second rumour was posted on the Twitter handle, @iChexo on April 12, claiming that the two Chinese had died of Ebola at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) same day.

But the commissioner said investigations carried out at LUTH confirmed this to be untrue.

“We believe that the author of these materials simply wanted to generate traffic to their websites, which would appear successfully achieved.

“We wish to assure you that health workers have continued to maintain a high index of suspicion of Ebola virus disease and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.

“The operations and surveillance activities of the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre have continued, despite the containment of Ebola and the declaration of Nigeria as Ebola-free by World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2014,” he said.

He said activities of the centre were still ongoing.