Governor Seyi Makinde on Friday night disclosed that one of the two positive COVID-19 cases confirmed on Thursday is from Yemetu in Ibadan and the other is a returnee from the United States who is based in Ikolaba.
Makinde who is Head of the COVID-19 task force in the state “during the COVID-19 Task Force meeting today, we were informed that two more tests came back positive. So, we have four new cases from the tests being conducted at Adamasingba Stadium”
According to him at a press briefing at the government house, this brings the number of active cases in Oyo State to seven.
“It has been our aspiration to test a lot more people and we think as we do this mass testing, we can see the pattern of the virus within our environment and from those results, we can implement appropriate measures designed to deal with the situation” he added.
Giving situation report on efforts made so far,the governor said on the disease while the 100-bed Infectious Disease Centre at Olodo is ready to receive cases, the state is already upgrading the isolation centre at LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso.
“The Maternal and Child Health Centre, Saki is also being converted to an isolation centre and General Hospital at Igbo-Ora is being evaluated for a section of it to be used as an isolation centre”.
The governor however said the results been received from Adamasingba Stadium “has made us move the resumption at the State Secretariat forward to Monday, the 27th of April 2020 and this is subject to further evaluation based on our circumstances closer to that time”.
He noted that one of the measures considered to prevent, contain and control the spread of COVID-19 in Oyo State is the compulsory use of face masks in public.
“Today, we reached a decision to implement this measure while the Government will produce an initial one million cloth face masks to kick start the mask in public places policy for Oyo State.
“We are collaborating with experts who have already designed these face masks to train the tailors on how to make them while 100 tailors will be commissioned by Monday, the 20th of April, 2020 to make 10,000 face masks each.
Makinde while mentioning that food security is a major issue which the government will have to address said “this is planting season and we want to ensure that our farmers are able to farm. So, we are ramping up on enlightenment of the farmers on how best to remain safe during the planting season”.
The state government, he disclosed will be collaborating with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IART) to get seedlings for the farmers so that they wont miss the planting season.
On palliatives, the governor stated the state government now have data and “we are sure that we’ve been able to identify the poorest of the poor in our environment, palliatives will be distributed by the end of next week”.
“We want to ensure that the palliatives get to those who actually need them”.
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While thanking the health workers,he noted that the government will continue to make their welfare a priority and ensure that they are adequately protected as they remain on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in Oyo State.
Makinde also commended members of the press for the balanced reporting of the activities of the Oyo State Government “as we do everything humanly possible to contain the spread of COVID-19 in our state”.
REMI FEYISIPO,Ibadan.
