Enugu State Government has called on Enugu residents to freely go out and get tested to enable them know their status on COVID-19.
The state Commissioner for Health, Ikechukwu Obi, who stated this while briefing journalists in Enugu recently on the state government’s efforts to curb the spread of the disease in the state, said that people should be courageous to do the tests as corona virus is not a death sentence.
He said that having test will help the state to get public data which it can work with to plan “If we don’t have correct data, there is no way we can plan very well for the population”.
The state he said, opened collation centers in all the 17 local governments but regrets to say that they are not happy with responses from those collation centres throughout the state. “Our people are not coming out to test. There is community spread, but testing will help us know the actual figures and in asking for the right size of vaccines needed in the state for the disease,” he noted.
The commissioner stated that the state was on the verge of ramping up testing across the state.
He stated that the efforts and sacrifices of the state’s health workers in the control of the spread of the disease were being threatened by the attitude of the residents who continued to disobey protocols
According to Obi, since the second wave of the pandemic, the state has recorded 1,738 cases, adding that 1,421 have been discharged and 21 dead, while active cases remained at 296.
The commissioner strongly warned that residents should continue to adopt safety measures such as wearing face masks, washing of hands, applying hand sanitisers and observing physical distancing.
“You don’t know who will succumb to COVID-19, so when you wear masks, you are taking responsibility for your health. The state government is doing all it can to reduce the spread and we will continue to do so to ensure the health of our people,” he said.
The pandemic, he added, has stretched the state’s health sector beyond limits, stressing that health workers in the state had not gone on leave in the last one year due to the crisis.
In his speeches the Commissioner for Information, Chidi Aroh, noted that a lot had gone into public enlightenment on the need to educate the people and create awareness for them to right right things .
Aroh said that the state government was not contemplating another lockdown, having re-opened schools, markets and other public places, but urged residents to support the government’s efforts to ensure the spread is reduced in the state.ends.
