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Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has said his administration is set to fumigate the government secretariat at Agodi, Ibadan to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic in the state.
Besides, he said the Sub-Committee of Oyo State COVID-19 Taskforce, Decontamination team, has also written to religious leaders, traditional rulers and private organisations to fumigate their facilities against COVID-19.
The governor made the disclosure when he briefed journalists on Wednesday after the meeting of the COVID-19 task force, which is being chaired by him, at the Government House, Oke-Oyinbo, Agodi, Ibadan.
According to him, “we have made arrangement to decontaminate the state secretariat. This will take place next week, between Monday April 13 and Wednesday April 15, 2020. Thereafter, the secretariat will be opened on Monday April 20, 2020.
“The team in charge of decontamination has been sending letters to religious leaders, traditional rulers, private organisations to decontaminate their facilities, using a standardised decontaminant.”
Makinde stated further that the taskforce had been considering rapid testing through additional centres to enable the government to map the behaviour of the virus as far as the state is concerned, adding that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) protocol is being followed at the approved laboratory- the Virology Laboratory in University College Hospital (UCH).
“For those two additional centres, we did discuss the protocol to be followed, and experts are working on that one. Once we have an alignment with the protocol to be followed; we will roll these out and our aspiration to test up to 10,000 people in Oyo State within the shortest possible time will be achieved.
Makinde, who said the Commissioner for Finance in the state, Mr. Akinola Ojo, reported to the task force on Wednesday that the state through endowment fund for COVID-19 has received close to N200 million, also made it known that modelling of the state by epidemiologists would help the government to decide the next step regarding the curfew and reopening of schools.
“We will roll out palliatives for the poorest of the poor within the next week. We are also working on a law to make the wearing of mask in public compulsory as one of the measures to slow down the spread of the virus. I know sometimes, it is not very comfortable, but if we have to go through this discomfort to slow down the speed of the virus, then we will make a law to ensure that this is done.
“We are also looking at local solutions. I know a lot of people have been calling me all sorts of names on social media. But from my experience, one thing that I know one of the things you have to do to conquer the virus is that you have to boost your immunity. We do have local solutions. Of course, we have to defer to experts opinions as a part of home-grown solutions to the COVID-19.
“People may say have we been funding the research institute very well? Are we in a position to even bring any kind of solution to the world? My answer is yes. I was discussing with experts, professors, even things like just chewing butter kola can help. When the West had flu season, they have the flu shots. But here, we have things like cold.
“When you are crossing over from dry season to rainy season, we almost always fall sick – cold, cough and catarrh. We have ways of dealing with these locally. So, I won’t say that, except a solution comes from the Western World or from the eastern world, that we can it deal with it. I believe we have the capacity, we have the intellect to look at, even things that work locally and we will keep encouraging that.
“We have the capacity to also validate some of the results that we are going to be getting. People may say they have done clinical trials for Chloroquine and some other medications. These are things that we take normally here. So, we are not ruling out local solutions to this pandemic.”
