Chikwe Ihekeazu, Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), has sounded warning to Nigerians for new lockdown if some health precautions continue to be ignored.
Speaking at the presidential task force briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja on Monday May 4, the NCDC DG admitted that new cases of Coronavirus may arise from non-compliance of health guidelines in some parts of the country where the total lockdown was lifted.
Chikwe stated that the federal government may be forced to issue another lockdown if there are increased cases of Coronavirus.
He said;
“It is not the guidelines per se, it is the thinking behind it. How do we want to manage the risk of explosion and transmission? Today, we might forgive a little bit because it is the first day.
“We will have infection 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 normalised some of these things.
“Yes, we knew today would be a problem because for the first time, people were let out of their homes but now they are out and we have seen the sunlight again, the challenge for us as a society is how do we now organise ourselves to mitigate these risks and limit transmission?
“We might have a few extra infection today and tomorrow but what we don’t want is an explosion of new infections.
If we do have that infection, there will 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 coming out to reopen parts of the economy, there is a price to pay which is to reorganise ourselves to do this safely.”
Recall the lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and FCT were ended on Sunday, leading to a partial reopening of the cities today May 4.
However health guidelines such as wearing of face masks and social distancing were violated, as crowds were spotted in banks and in many buses.
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