By The Federal Government has no plans to impose a fresh national lockdown following the third wave of coronavirus, the National Economic Council (NEC) said on Thursday.
This was revealed by Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu while speaking to State House correspondents after the virtual NEC meeting at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, which was presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
According to NAN, Sanwo-Olu stated that the NEC had no indication of an impending lockdown and that it would hold an emergency meeting on the COVID-19 third wave if the need arose.
“We will be reviewing on a weekly basis, like every two to three days, what the trends are; the chairman of the council has also mentioned to us that if there is a need for an emergency meeting, he will call one,” he said.
“But, assurances were given by the NCDC and the Presidential Task Force, working with relevant states like Lagos, to be tracking and monitoring what is happening almost on daily basis.
“So, we do not think that we are there; we do not have any indication that we will get there; so we are preparing ourselves to ensure that as much as possible, we can very quickly flatten the curve.”
According to the governor, the Director General, NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, gave a global overview of what had been happening in the past one month, with Nigeria having 168, 552 cases reported as at July 15, and 1,993 active cases.
Sanwo-Olu quoted the NCDC as saying states had discharged over 140, 000 people, while only 2,124 deaths were recorded so far, though the positivity rates had gone up, despite the low number of cases in the country.
He said that Ihekweazu informed the NEC that Lagos State has the largest load of cases in the country, accounting for 70% to 80% of all instances, with an increase in the number of cases since 10 weeks ago.
The governor said: “In the last two weeks, we have seen an increase from a positivity average of about 1.5 per cent to positivity average nationally of about 3.5 per cent; Lagos has seen a positivity of 5.5 per cent in the last two weeks; so Lagos, Rivers and Kwara from the report have seen increases in positivity rates.
“It is important for us to know that the Delta variant, which is the new variant, is also in our country and has also been identified in a total of 103 countries globally.
“The Delta variant is 60 per cent more transmissible than the Alfa variant; so, we are watching all the trends and the NCDC and Lagos will be working collaboratively.”
