The National Economic Council (NEC),says there was no manifestation of an impending lockdown, as the Nigeria gears up for COVID-19’s third wave.
Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, who disclosed stated this in a briefing to State House correspondents after the virtual NEC meeting, said the vice president had assured that NEC would convene an emergency meeting on the COVID-19 third wave, whenever the need arose.
He said:“We will be reviewing on a weekly basis, like every two to three days, what the trends are; the chairman of the council has also mentioned to us that if there is a need for an emergency meeting, he will call one.But, assurances were given by the NCDC and the Presidential Task Force, working with relevant states like Lagos, to be tracking and monitoring what is happening almost on daily basis.
“So, we do not think that we are there; we do not have any indication that we will get there; so we are preparing ourselves to ensure that as much as possible, we can very quickly flatten the curve’’
He added that Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General, NCDC, had provided a global insight of what had been happening in the past one month, with Nigeria having 168, 552 cases reported as at July 15, and 1,993 active cases.
Quoting the NCDC,Sanwo-Olu said states had discharged over 140, 000 people, while only 2,124 deaths were recorded so far, adding that the positivity rates had gone up, in spite of the low number of cases in the country.
He said Ihekweazu informed NEC that Lagos State had the highest burden of 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the cases in the country, having recorded increases in the number of cases since 10 weeks ago.
“In the last two weeks, we have seen an increase from a positivity average of about 1.5 per cent to positivity average nationally of about 3.5 per cent; Lagos has seen a positivity of 5.5 per cent in the last two weeks; so Lagos, Rivers and Kwara from the report have seen increases in positivity rates.
“It is important for us to know that the Delta variant, which is the new variant, is also in our country and has also been identified in a total of 103 countries globally.
“The Delta variant is 60 per cent more transmissible than the Alfa variant; so, we are watching all the trends and the NCDC and Lagos will be working collaboratively,’’ Sanwo-Olu said.
Meanwhile,Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu has alerted that the state needs to reach the high target of 60 percent vaccination before the end of 2021 or going into the beginning of 2022 to prevent the waves of new variants coming in to Lagos and trying to force a lockdown of the state’s economy.
He spoke at the south-west edition of town hall meeting on COVID-19 vaccination in Nigeria,where he said that growing rumours and conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine have affected the uptake of the vaccine in Nigeria despite the increasing demand of the vaccine in Lagos State.
Represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Mrs. Folashade Jaji, the governor regretted that the rumours and misinformation have gained ground amongst the populace with a significant effect on the popularity of the vaccination campaign.
He said: “Uncensored and unmonitored social media content is of course also helping to amplify these conspiracy theories and misinformation. These myths and rumours need to be aggressively dispelled in order not to jeopardize the efforts of all stakeholders, and to ensure the protection of the health and wellbeing of our citizens.
“We must never get tired of pointing out that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, with more than three billion doses administered worldwide, thus far, and close to one billion persons fully vaccinated. Nigeria did not record any case of death associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, of the almost four million Nigerians vaccinated so far”
Sanwo-Olu while noting that the African Continent is lagging behind the rest of the world, both in terms of the availability of vaccines and the number of persons who have been vaccinated, stated that the widening gulf in vaccination coverage will have major global implications in the near future, if unchecked, stressing that the world must rally around to ensure that Africa is not left behind.
He said: “As influential stakeholders, we must continue to reiterate the interventions introduced to curtail the community transmission of the COVID-19 infection; regular hand washing, wearing of face mask, physical distancing and refraining from non-essential travel.
“I want to use this opportunity to call on our royal fathers, religious leaders and elders to please continue in their efforts to fill the gaps in terms of community knowledge on the benefit of the COVID-19 vaccination, and also to help dispel false rumours about the vaccine.”
“We must get our neighbourhoods and communities to own the vaccination campaign and the entire fight against the Coronavirus. We can and must win this battle, and it starts with collaboration and partnership”, Sanwo-Olu said.
Speaking, Prof. Akin Abayomi, the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, stated that demand for vaccine in Lagos is very high. Abayomi said that he is not surprise Lagos is playing host to the Town Hall Meeting because of the need to build on the vaccine acceptance and address issues of vaccine hesitancy particularly as some evidence suggests that Lagos State is going into a third wave.
He noted that Lagos is beginning to see increasing activities at public and accredited private laboratories over the last three months which suggests that many more people are testing positive to COVID-19.
Abayomi explained that the increasing numbers of COVID-19 positive cases is inevitable in Lagos because of the cosmopolitan nature of the State.
He said, “We have had three months of peace, and you may think we have been resting but we have not, because it is during times of peace that we actually work harder and we have been anticipating a third wave because we watch the global environment, we watch what is going on the continent and it is inevitable that Lagos will see some increasing activities because of the cosmopolitan nature of this mega city.
“We receive visitors on a daily basis from all over the world and despite our very stringent guidelines and operating procedure at the airport we still see people who are positive coming in and our attempt to prevent them from infecting other members of the community is not always 100 percent .
“So if we are beginning to see the beginning of a third wave, we are not surprised that the request for vaccines has also increased. Members of cabinet, Mr. Governor and I receive daily calls on when the next batch of vaccines are coming in. I will like to reassure you that the demand for Lagos for vaccine is high none the less we still need to hit that high target of 60 percent vaccination hopefully before the end of this year or going into the beginning of next year if we are going to prevent these waves of new variants coming in to Lagos and trying to force us to shut down our economy.
“It is Mr. Governor’s determined resolution that Lagos will not shut down its economy again, and for us to do that, it is not just the government; the government will do everything in its power to reduce the opportunity for viruses to come in and create havoc, but it is also a civic responsibility of everybody and that is why we are asking everyone to follow the rules and regulations and be each other’s brother and sister keepers by maintaining social distancing, respiration and personal hygiene and if feeling unwell, get tested for COVID”.
