The Federal Government on Monday said it would maintain the current guidelines on “ease of lockdown” for another two weeks, insisting on strict enforcement of laid-down rules going forward.
This means that with effect from midnight on Monday, the ban on non-essential inter-state passenger travels, overnight curfew from 8pm to 6am, restrictions on social and religious gatherings, mandatory use of facemasks or coverings in public in addition to maintaining physical distancing and personal hygiene, among other guidelines earlier announced by the government remain in force.
In addition, selected businesses and offices will remain open from 9am to 6pm, while partial and controlled interstate movement of goods and services will continue to be allowed to ease the movement of goods and services from producers to consumers.
“President has approved that the measures, exemptions, advisories and scope of entities allowed to re-open under phase one of the eased lockdown shall be maintained across the federation for another two weeks effective from 12:00 midnight today (18th May, 2020 to 1st June, 2020),” Boss Mustapha, chairman of the Presidential Task on COVID-19, said during the daily briefing of the task force in Abuja on Monday.
President Muhammadu Buhari had, in a nationwide broadcast on April 27, approved a phased and gradual easing of lockdown measures in the Federal Capital Territory, Lagos and Ogun States effective from Monday, May 4. He said at the time that this would be followed strictly with aggressive reinforcement of testing and contact tracing measures while allowing the restoration of some economic and business activities in certain sectors. The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 had followed with detailed guidelines for the gradual easing, which has now been extended till June 1.
“Nigeria is not where we wish to be in terms of control, ownership, infrastructure and change of behaviour,” Mustapha said on Monday. “The reality is that in spite of the modest progress made, Nigeria is not yet ready for full opening of the economy and tough decisions have to be taken for the good of the greater majority. Any relaxation will only portend grave danger for our populace.”
As a result, he said the current phase of eased restriction will be maintained for another two weeks during which stricter enforcement and persuasion measures would be pursued.
He, however, said the task force would continue intensifying efforts to “tell (communicate), trace (identify) and treat (manage)” cases as well as elevating the level of community ownership of non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Mustapha, who announced that President Buhari approved the maintenance of the guidelines based on the recommendations of the PTF, said in arriving at the final recommendations to the president, the task force objectively and frankly interrogated certain critical factors and came to the conclusion that the fight against COVID-19 is long term as the virus is not likely to go away very soon.
He noted that going forward, government would refocus policy on community ownership by intensifying the mobilisation of individuals, especially the communities, to take ownership of the COVID-19 fight.
He said this would be accompanied by a corresponding development of infrastructure and other public health measures to be undertaken in every community and at every phase of the response, including surveillance, case finding, testing, isolation, tracing and quarantining contacts.
The PTF said the existing lockdown order in Kano would be maintained for additional two weeks, adding that there would be imposition of precision lockdown in states, or in metropolitan/high-burden LGAs, that are reporting rapid increase in number of cases, when the need arises.
He, however, announced that government would complement these measures with the provision of palliatives and continue re-evaluation of the impact of the interventions, as well as aggressive scale-up of efforts to ensure that communities are informed, engaged and participating in the response with enhanced public awareness in high risk states.
Giving account of achievements in the phase one of the eased lockdown in the last two weeks, Mustapha said there has been an increase in the number of laboratories in the COVID-19 network from 15 to 26, additional 15,558 tests were conducted in the country (with a cumulative total of 35,098 tests and the number of tests per million increasing from 50 to 154), increase in the number of trained personnel to 11,409 health workers thereby boosting capacity for case management, as well as procurement and distribution of additional personal protective equipment and ventilators across the country.
He also noted that the doubling time of the virus has slowed down from seven days to 11 days; beds available for isolation and case management increased from 3,500 to 5,000 beds nationwide; increase in efficiency of the identification, testing, evacuation, and isolation process for confirmed cases and progressive improvement in capacity of the health system to respond to the outbreak.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, director general, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), explained that the two weeks’ extension of the phase one of ease of lockdown is to enable all sectors develop guidelines to re-start the economy safely, but he said restarting Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) may be difficult.
The DG revealed that one major consensus reached during the PTF meeting with President Buhari was that the country would have to live with the virus, safely, but noted that SMEs are unregulated unlike the aviation, education sector, etc. Therefore, developing and adhering to guidelines may be difficult.
“How do we restart the economy safely from a lockdown? How do we do this safely is a question we all have to grapple with. How do we restart the economy safely in the farms, market, schools, transport, aviation? This has to be our focus in the next few weeks,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has commenced infection prevention and control training for Almajiris in Kano State to enhance community awareness and drastically contain the rising cases of the dreaded coronavirus in the country.
Olorunibe Mamora, minister of state for health, disclosed that the NCDC is to collaborate with development partners and engage influential religious leaders on community outreach in eight states of the federation.
“The NCDC is collaborating with development partners to engage influential religious leaders in Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Kebbi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Sokoto and Zamfara States to complement the community mobilisation activities of our community health workers,” Mamora said.
“They will also facilitate awareness creation on COVID-19 in the rural communities as well as support our efforts to ramp up community testing. In addition, we have commenced Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) training specifically for the Almajiri in Kano,” he said.
