Senator Mao Ohuabunwa, the immediate past representative of Abia North district in the Nigeria Senate, has expressed worry over the rising cases of the deadly coronavirus disease in Abia State.
This is even as the Acting Governor, Sir Ude Oko Chukwu during a press briefing, warned that residents of the commercial city of Aba could be more vulnerable to the scourge based on available statistics.
Oko Chukwu also announced that the two molecular laboratory equipment procured by the state would be arriving this weekend from the United States of America, assuring that the State Government would deploy its rapid response team to all the Local Government Areas to ensure that the target of testing no fewer than 10 percent of the population was achieved.
However, Senator Ohuabunwa while distributing thousands of nose masks to communities in Abia North, Wednesday in Umuahia, urged residents of the state to take the issue of COVID -19 very seriously, stressing that the pandemic is real contrary to feelings in some quarters.
He charged residents to strictly adhere to all government directives and personal hygiene including social distancing as part of the sacrifices needed to stay away from the pandemic.
The former Speaker, ECOWAS Parliament who was represented by the Director-General of his political structure, “Follow Better Organisation”, Dr. Ndubuisi Eke, noted that if residents failed to take the crusade against the scourge seriously, Abia could become the epicenter of the scourge in the South East in the months ahead.
DAILY POST learned that only seven active coronavirus cases were reported in Abia until last week when Governor Okezie Ikpeazu tested positive to the pandemic, but ever since then, the number has jumped to over 166 confirmed cases.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, on Tuesday announced 490 new coronavirus infections.
The agency also announced that the total number of confirmed cases in the country is now 17, 148.
