… reject request to ‘quarantine’ over 2,000 coming from US, UK, China, UAE
Amid preparations for the evacuation of
Nigerians abroad due to the raging coronavirus disease across the world,
hotels in Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory have refused to make
their rooms available for the isolation of the returnees when they
eventually arrive in the country.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Geoffrey Onyeama, said at the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on
COVID-19 on Friday that finding hotels to quarantine the returnees had
been a serious challenge because the hotels believed using their
facilities to isolate the returnees could damage their brand.
Over 2,000 Nigerians in the United
States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, China and other countries
had registered with the Nigerian missions in their country of residence
for their evacuation after agreeing to subject themselves to mandatory
coronavirus testing and 14-day quarantine on arrival in Abuja or Lagos.
Most of the countries where the returnees are coming from have far more
cases than Nigeria.
As of the time of filing this report,
the coronavirus had spread to 26 states and the FCT, with 1,095 cases
recorded across the country by the NCDC. While 208 patients had been
discharged, 32 had died.
The new cases were 80 in Lagos, 21 in
Gombe, five in FCT, two each in Zamfara and Edo, and one each in Ogun,
Oyo, Kaduna and Sokoto states.
Some countries had equally evacuated their citizens from Nigeria amid the raging virus.
Onyeama had said on Monday that the
evacuation would commence next week, noting that two airlines had agreed
to bring back the citizens at affordable rates. He noted that the
returnees would be brought back in batches of 200 but that their
accommodation was the next challenge.
But, while giving an update in Abuja on
Friday, the minister said the government was facing the challenge of
securing hotels where the returnees could be quarantined.
He explained that he sought the
assistance of the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, but that the
governor could not get hotels in the state to release their premises as
isolation centres.
Onyeama said, “The numbers (of Nigerians
awaiting evacuation) in the UK alone is about 2,000 and the simple fact
of the matter is that we don’t just have the isolation centres, the
hospital beds and hotels to accommodate them all.
“We have been looking for hotels in
Abuja and Lagos. I spoke this afternoon (Friday) with the governor of
Lagos State and it is a real challenge even for the governor to find
hotels that are willing to take these people in for 14 days.
“A lot of hotels clearly feel it would
damage their brand or it would have some effects on their business. That
has been a real problem for us now.”
The minister said the task force
tinkered with the idea of directing the returnees to go on
self-isolation, but noted that there was no guarantee that they would
stay at home.
Onyeama said, “The other alternative is
for people to come back and be isolated in their homes. But when you
have such numbers, some members of the task force feel there is a risk;
that you cannot guarantee that they would stay at home in quarantine and
it would be very difficult to monitor that number of people for two
weeks.
“So, this is a real dilemma we are
facing and you can imagine, if they start coming back and the numbers of
positive cases start increasing, then the government would be blamed
that why did you bring so many people back? These are all the issues we
are grappling with.”
Commenting on the issues facing
Nigerians in China, the minister said the Federal Government was
addressing the extension of the quarantine period for some Nigerians,
adding that the Chinese government had promised to assist them.
On the number of Nigerians who tested
positive for the virus in China, he said, “When I met with the Chinese
ambassador and he talked about the plane that came to their country in
which there were Nigerian passengers who subsequently tested positive,
it was within the range of nine, 12 and 13.”
However, a diplomatic correspondence
from the Guangzhou Municipal Government to the Federal Government
obtained by our correspondent indicated that 72 Nigerians tested
positive for COVID-19 in Guangzhou city.
Lagos discharges 10 more COVID-19 patients
Meanwhile, the Lagos State Government
has announced the discharge of 10 more COVID-19 patients, having tested
negative twice for the virus.
The state Ministry of Health made this known via its Twitter handle @LSMOH on Friday.
The ministry said the number of discharged patients from the isolation centres in the state was now 117.
The ministry said, “Ten more COVID-19
Lagos patients; three females and seven males, including three foreign
nationals – two Indians and one Filipino – were today (Friday)
discharged from our isolation facilities at Yaba and Onikan to reunite
with the society.”
Ekiti buries COVID-19 victim, bans inter-state movement of corpses
Ekiti State Commissioner for Health, Dr
Mojisola Yaya-Kolade, on Friday said the health worker that died of
COVID-19 on Wednesday had been buried in strict compliance with the
World Health Organisation recommendations.
Yaya-Kolade said the 29-year-old woman,
who went into a coma during labour before being diagnosed of
coronavirus, was buried on Thursday in Ado-Ekiti by the government and
the woman’s family, adding that “Ekiti State Government will liaise with
the family on how to raise the surviving baby.”
The commissioner, who spoke in Ado-Ekiti
during a COVID-19 update press briefing, said, “The 45-year-old doctor
infected by the dead victim is responding to treatment in our isolation
centre.”
Panic in Bayelsa over two suspected index cases
There was panic in Bayelsa State on Friday following reports of two suspected index cases of COVID-19.
It was gathered that the two suspected
cases reported themselves at the state Specialist Hospital near the
Government House, Yenagoa, claiming to have contracted the virus.
The incident was said to have caused
pandemonium as workers in the hospital, including doctors and nurses,
took to their heels upon hearing the claims of the two persons.
A source, who witnessed the incident,
said, “Even the doctors, everybody ran away. You need to see people
running away from the hospital. We saw when the governor came out of
Government House, angry.”
The two persons were said to have arrived in the state last Saturday as a result of the alleged porosity of the boundary points.
Chairman of the state COVID-19 Task
Force Implementation Committee, Dr Inodu Apoku, confirmed the incident
but said the two cases did not fall within the protocol of coronavirus
testing.
“Still, we took their blood samples and
we are sending them to Irrua (Specialist Teaching Hospital, Benin City,
Edo State). But actually, they don’t fall within the protocol of
reporting,” Apoku said.
Although the state has yet to record any
confirmed case of COVID-19, the incident was said to have prompted
Governor Douye Diri to storm the boundary points with neighbouring Delta
and Rivers states to enforce the inter-state lockdown directive.
The acting Chief Press Secretary to the
Governor, Mr Daniel Alabrah, who confirmed this in a statement on
Friday, said Diri first visited Adagbabiri, the boundary community to
Patani in Delta State.
Ogun records first COVID-19 death
Ogun State Governor, Mr Dapo Abiodun, said on Friday that the state had recorded its first COVID-19 death.
The governor, in a statement on Friday,
said the state had recorded 29 cases, out of which six had been
discharged while 22 were in the isolation centres in the state.
He, however, did not give details of the death.
The statement reads, “Out of the 29
cases, six of them have been discharged to rejoin their families and
restart normal life; one is dead and there are 22 active cases who are
currently receiving efficient treatment from our medical officers.
“For us in Ogun State, we thank God that
our efforts towards fighting the COVID-19 pandemic to a standstill are
achieving desired results but we cannot also drop our guard.
“In the last one week, the number of
confirmed cases in our dear Ogun State has risen to more than double. As
of Thursday, April 23, there are 29 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ogun
State as against 12 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, April
17.”
He said the increase in the number of
cases was due to the increase in the pace of testing, adding that it was
better to detect and treat people already infected than leave them
undetected, which would lead to community transmission.
He added, “Let me also state that the
majority of these new cases are detected on immigrants coming into our
country through land borders. The lesson thereof is that the peculiarity
of our dear state as the next-door neighbour to Lagos State, the
epicentre of the disease, and a gateway from Lagos to the other parts of
the country, and being a window to the West African sub-region, puts us
at a vulnerable position.”
US coronavirus deaths top 50,000
The death toll from the coronavirus
pandemic surpassed 50,000 in the United States on Friday as President
Trump signed a bill to release fresh relief funds for small businesses
and some states began reopening parts of their economies.
Confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide
Friday exceeded 2.76 million, with more than 194,000 dead, according to
data from Johns Hopkins University. The Wall Street Journal reported
that the US accounted for nearly a third of the cases, exceeding 883,000
and more than a quarter of the deaths, at 50,114.
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