The Governor of Ondo State, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, has been advised to as matter of urgency order the total lock down of the state before it is too late.
The admonition was given by the state’s Epidemiologist, Dr. Stephen Fagbemi during the inter-ministerial committee meeting on the measures to be taken to safeguard citizens of the state from the raging coronavirus.
According to Dr. Fagbemi, he said that Ondo State should not exercise any form of delay in order to prevent the current situation of some states from occurring in Ondo State.
The Epidemiologist also disclosed that in the days ahead, confirmed cases of the virus will surge past 1000.
He said, “If we wait till we get 20 cases before the federal government locks us down, we would have waited too long. Currently, Ekiti, Edo, Kogi States are on a lock down. So, we should also do that and tell everybody to stay at home. If we are able to do that, number of cases will be minimizes.
“The challenge of total lockdown is the challenge of feeding. How do people have access to food. Some people do not have the purchasing power to buy for two weeks but we have decided they almost everybody selling stuffs can sell it at the front of their house because the market thing is not working.
“There are 11 ventilators currently in the state with five working. We are lucky to have that number.
“Nigeria is beginning to enter its own outbreak fully. This time last week we had very few cases, now we are over a hundred. By the end of this week if our projections are right we would be over a thousand. That is the truth. And the one thousand will spread across almost all the state except for the north east where there insurgency because nobody will be doing testing there. That is the reality.”
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Wahab Adegbenro who is also the Chairman of the inter-ministerial committee, said that the Governor has approved 98 million for committee stressing that the committee is working hard to ensure that the directives of the governor is obeyed.
He also disclosed that, “we have 12 individuals who have been tested while five have turn negative. We are awaiting the result of the remaining seven.
“The infectious disease hospital is ready and fully operational but what we were told by NCDC is that all confirmed cases must be moved to Lagos. For now, the federal government has two treatment centres where confirmed cases must be taken to, that is Lagos and Abuja.
“When we have a suspect, the best we can do is to hold him or her at the hospital while we await the result. Additional medical workers have also been posted to the facility.”
