The Director-General (DG) of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu has expressed fears of a possible explosion of new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections in the country.
Dr Ihekweazu expressed his fears during the Presidential Task Force Briefing on coronavirus, following the easing of restriction placed on movement to control the spread of coronavirus that stated on Monday.
He stressed that the federal government might be left with no other option than to reorder the restriction on movement, saying the guidelines emplaced for easing the lockdown were abused.
“Today, some of the measures have been abused. Initial reports are not too pleasing across the country and this is to join both the Secretary of the Federal Government and the Honourable Minister to really appeal to everyone across the country.
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“When we say take responsibility this, yes, we are addressing individuals, but we really need to address corporate Nigerians. One of the biggest groups that were allowed to restart business today was banks. But many banks have limited the number of branches that are opened.
“There is a benefit of doubt but when you limit the number of branches that open, everybody goes to the one branch that is open, and that becomes counter production. So, there is only so much we can do.
“We can produce all the guidelines in the world, we can preach, attend TVs, we can do press conferences, if organizations are not going to come up and support the implementation of these measures and help us manage the risks, and focus on a risks-based approach, because it’s not the guidelines per se. It is the thinking behind it. How do we want to manage and mitigate the risk of exposure, the risk of transmission in every group?
“Today, we might forgive a little bit because it was the first day. We will have infections because of what happened today, no doubt about that. But how can we learn from the mistakes of today into tomorrow, next tomorrow, so by Friday, hopefully we have normalized some of these things.
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“Yes, we knew today would be a problem. Everybody here knew today would be a problem because for the first time, people were let out of their homes. But, now they are out, seeing the sunlight again, the challenge for us, because as a society, is how do we now organize ourselves to mitigate these risks, to limit transmission from each other so that, yes we might have a few extra infections today and tomorrow, but what we don’t want is an explosion of new infections.
“If we do have that explosion, then, there would be almost no choice left for the leadership of the country than to ask all of us to go back into our homes. So, for the benefit of having a few hours a day of coming out to reopen parts of the economy, there is a price to pay and that price is that we organize ourselves to do this safely.
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“So, I ask every Nigerian watching this to please work with us to mitigate these risks, to limit transmission, so that we can continue incrementally to come out of this outbreak situation, even without a vaccine, even without stopping transmission, altogether, we can learn to live with it for the next few weeks and months until we are able to come out of the transmission period altogether,” Dr Ihekweazu said.
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