The Federal Government of Nigeria has intensified screening and tests at airports and other points of entry into the country as a precautionary measure following the outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) on Thursday said thermometers and other equipment have been used to monitor some entrants into the country since the latest outbreak in Congo.

“We are using all the facilities available to detect the virus. That means extra use of thermometers. We must take extra measures to make sure people are screened at all entry points into the country,” Sunday James, spokesman for the NIS said.

At least 17 persons have so far died in an area in northwestern Congo, two years after the worst ever outbreak of the virus ended in West Africa after killing more than 11,300 people and infecting some 28,000 others mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Nigeria was hailed then as having contained the virus in 2014, with 8 deaths, following fears that the virus could spread through Lagos, the commercial capital of the country with an estimated 20 million inhabitants.

Ebola spread to Nigeria in 2014 when Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American diplomat flew into the country from Monrovia, the Liberian capital and collapsed at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.