The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has warned that there may be another round of lockdown if there is a very high rate of coronavirus infection following the easing of the last lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory.
The Director General of NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, gave the warning on Monday while giving update on the activities on the presidential task force on COVID-19.
His warning was against the backdrop of the violation of the order for physical distancing as the lockdown by President Muhammadu Buhari in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja was eased on Monday.
Recall that the president imposed the lockdown to prevent the spread of the disease.
The NCDC boss said there would certainly be infection as a result of the rush that greeted the easing of the lockdown on Monday, efforts should be made in the following days to ensure that people are better organized so that the violation of physical distancing order would not continue to repeat itself.
He said if the violation continued and there was an explosion in terms of the rate of infection, the government might be left with no choice but to impose another lockdown.
His words: “How do we want to manage the risk of explosion and transmission? Today, we might forgive a little bite because it is the first day.
“We will have infection 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 infection today and tomorrow but what we don’t want is an explosion of new infections. If we do have that infection, 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.”
