The Federal Government has reiterated that the COVID-19 global pandemic is far from being over in the country.
The National Coordinator, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Sani Aliyu made the declaration during the briefing of the committee in Abuja on Wednesday, saying the chances the country would come out of the crisis is very slim, although it depends on the citizen compliance with the guidelines issued by the government he said.
In his statement, ‘we must do everything to prevent another spike and spread of the virus during the eased lockdown.”
He revealed about 80% of the coronavirus patients, especially those asymptomatic; do not require either hospital admission or ventilators but rather just monitoring.
According to him, such a person shouldn’t be kept at isolation centres because they waste space but suggest a hotel will be a better place since they are yet to present any symptom.
He explained by doing such it would make the space they are occupying to be available for those that have gone down with the real symptom and that would be cheaper for state governments to handle.
His statement which partly reads; “As you can see the number of deaths in Europe and other places, due to be administered with ventilators, most cases do not require ventilators, which rather worsened the symptoms for those who did not need it.
“In terms of case management, we’ll like to again appeal to state governments, particularly those yet to ensure the provision of isolation facilities, to please make sure that they have at least 300 beds available per state so that they can isolate persons that are positive with COVID-19 infection.
“It is particularly important that when it comes to isolation facilities, appropriate prioritisation is placed on those that have mild or no symptoms.
“This group of persons with COVID-19 infection should not be placed in a hospital environment, they are better off being placed in a non-hospital environment, such as hotels where they’ll be comfortably looked after, because they do not require any specific monitoring or treatment.
“And it’ll be much cheaper for state governments to adopt this approach for the 80 per cent of those that will be positive with COVID-19 infection and allow hospital beds and medical facilities to be used for those that require them most.”
He enjoined citizens to corporate with the government and the security agencies to increase the chances of the country to overcome the pandemic soon.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Chikwe Ihekweazu revealed the centre was using an electric data collecting tool which was developed during the Ebola crisis to drive the response of the coronavirus.
He said the tool is what is aiding Nigerians to be seeing the update every day.
He added that the agency also has a logistics management tool which tracks all the health gears like sanitizers, mask and the rest where they go while at the office.
