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Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government has ruled out another economic lockdown despite the spike in cases of coronavirus infections in the country.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and PTF Chairman on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, Tyler this out at the daily briefing on Thursday, while responding to a question on if the government was thinking of another round of lockdown to flatten the curve of the pandemic.
He said: “As we had indicated in my first address on this subject that we will study the situation, look at it and see how we are going and if there is need for a review, that review will be advised by data, by science, by experiences of other jurisdictions and by the peculiarities of our environment.
“To go back to a total lockdown must be taken in the context of what we desire to achieve, after we’ve lockdown for about five weeks and seen how we fared. So the issue of review might not have that in contemplation because you can’t move forward and begin to move backwards again.
“In terms of the strategic implementation of our policies, we might not be looking towards that direction, but we might be looking at how to strengthen what we have put in place, how to ensure compliance and all other non-pharmaceutical interventions that we have put in place.”
The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said earlier that as at Wednesday, Nigeria had 409 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 which increased the total number of cases to 13,873; have successfully treated and discharged 4,351 persons and unfortunately lost 382 Nigerians to the disease.
