COVID-19: CBN, NNPC move to save evacuees in Lagos, Abuja

.Says despite efforts made so far, Nigeria not yet ripe to fully reopen economy

.Identifies 9 densely populated LGAs with high number of COVID-19 cases

.To engage in aggressive scaling up of community participation

As the Coronavirus pandemic otherwise referred to as COVID-19 continue to spread across the country, the Federal Government has announced the extension of the current level of eased lockdown from midnight of Monday, May 18 to June 1, 2020.

This is just as the government disclosed that the fight against COVID-19 is long term as the virus is not likely to go away very soon.

Speaking on Monday at the resumed daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 in Abuja, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, said that despite the efforts made so far, Nigeria was not ripe to fully reopen the economy.

While taking a cursory review of the last two weeks when the current measures were put in place, the SGF said that the sacrifice was necessary in the interest of all Nigerians.

To this end, Mustapha said that President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered that the current level of eased lockdown should be repeated from midnight of Monday, May 18 to June 1, 2020, this would include the 8pm to 6am nationwide curfew that had since been in force.

He also said that the total lockdown on Kano State had been extended with another two weeks, while a precision lockdown would be imposed on states or metropolitan areas which had been identified as high burden areas.

He said: “Ladies and gentlemen, the reality is that in spite of the modest progress made, Nigeria is not yet ready for full opening of the economy and tough decisions have to be taken for the good of the greater majority.

“Any relaxation will only portend grave danger for our populace.

“Advisedly, the current phase of eased restriction will be maintained for another two weeks during which stricter enforcement and persuasion measures will be pursued.

“The two weeks extension of Phase one of the eased restriction is also to enable other segments of the economy prepare adequately for compliance with the guidelines, preparatory to reopening in the coming weeks.

“For the PTF, we share your pains but our future is in the hands of every Nigerian and future decisions will depend greatly on our compliance”.

Mustapha further disclosed that The PTF has identified nine high burden local government areas in the federation with the highest burden.

All the nine local government areas, the PTF added, are densely populated local government areas nationwide.

“Our surveillance, infection prevention and control activities identified nine high burden local government areas in the federation reporting high number of cases and accounting for 51% of the total number of infections in the country.

“All the nine are densely populated local government areas nationwide.

“We have also seen that though Nigeria’s caseload still lags behind several other countries, our large population and relatively high degree of mobility and urbanisation (50%) places us at an increased risk for high transmissibility.

“Therefore, our consideration of ease of restrictions has to balance lives and livelihoods and the slow and gradually phased approach should be science and data driven”, he stated.

The SGF added that government would henceforth engage in aggressive scaling up of community participation in the campaign against the COVID-19 scourge.

On his part, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said that a high level technical meeting on the output of the National COVID-19 Response Mid-Action Review has been conducted.

He added that the output from this meeting will provide guidance in strengthening our response and develop strategies for reaching more communities.