FG Speaks on Face Mask Guideline
The Presidential Taskforce (PTF) chairman on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha has said that they are developing a national policy on usage of face masks.
He therefore stated that Nigerians would be duly informed as soon as the policy was finalised.
Speaking at the daily briefing as well, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said the testing capacity increased by the Federal Government to 10 centres. This he said has made it possible or more Nigerians to be tested across the country.
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The Minister who also revealed that the COVID-19 Accreditation Committee had begun the inspection of private treatment centres in order to increase bed spaces for infected persons, however, noted that there was limited supply of protective equipment globally, but Nigeria had enough in stock to protect majorly the health workers.
He also reiterated that infected persons must give accurate information about their travel history and symptoms to protect their family members and health workers.
On his part, The Director-General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, said the team had adopted physical distancing to replace social distancing that was earlier prescribed for Nigerians.
This he said was so because of the huge population of the country and its high density. While noting that the closeness of people living in a geographical space made it easy to spread the coronavirus, Ihekweazu said record had shown that mobility in Nigeria had reduced by 27 percent. This figure he said has to be lower to ensure that the virus is completely eradicated from Nigeria.
He also noted that the obstacle would be bigger if economic and other activities were restarted before getting over the burden.
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Speaking on the contacts identified, the NCDC DG said 91 percent contacts of all confirmed cases had been identified as of Thursday.
“In the 30 percent of the cases we have, we have not figured out how they got the infection. That is an early indicator of community spread. We can confirm that we know 91 per cent of all the contacts of all the confirmed cases.”
