COVID-19 Lockdown may continue – Nigerian govt warns

The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC),Chikwe Ihekweazu has warned Nigerians of risking another lockdown if they continue to violate some health guidelines.

Ihekweazu made this known while speaking at the presidential task force briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja on Monday, stating that new cases of the virus may arise if people continued to flout the health directives in some parts of the country where the lockdown was eased.

He said that the Federal government might be forced to impose another lockdown if there are more cases of coronavirus.

He said “How do we want to manage the risk of explosion and transmission?

”Today, we might forgive a little bit because it is the first day.

“We will definitely have more cases because of what happened today, no doubt about that.

“But how can we learn from the mistakes of today into tomorrow, next tomorrow so by Friday hopefully we have normalised some of these things.

“Yes, we knew today would be a problem because for the first time, people were let out of their homes but now they are out and we have seen the sunlight again, the challenge for us as a society is how do we now organise ourselves to mitigate these risks and limit transmission?

“We might have a few extra infections today and tomorrow but what we don’t want is an explosion of new infections.

“If the cases of the virus infection increases, there will be almost no choice left for the leadership of the country than to ask all of us to go back into our homes.

“So for the benefit of coming out to reopen parts of the economy, there is a price to pay which is to reorganise ourselves to do this safely.”