COVID-19: FG backtracks, says not convinced on flattening curve yet

Is the Covid-19 curve flattening or spiking?

The Federal Government on Monday retracted its earlier stance on flattening the spread of COVID-19 curve in the country.

The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, said this on Monday in Abuja at the joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

He also bemoaned the drop in testing for the virus across the country.

It would be recalled that the Chairman of the PTF and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, had last week Thursday, announced that the task force had observed that the nation was already flattening the curve of the spread of the virus in the country.

However, Aliyu at the Monday’s briefing, backtracked from the earlier verdict, saying that they (the PTF) were not convinced that the curve is being flattened.

According to him, such a decision would be reached when they were sure that the country is having enough aggressive testing.

Dr Aliyu, who confirmed that the ‘fatigue factor’ had already started setting in with Nigerians, as most people seemed to have become tired of the COVID-19, however warned that this would be a wrong time to let the guards down against the spread of the disease.

“Allowing fatigue at this time could sabotage the gains previously made in the national response, adding that this could lead to reintroduction of restrictions.

“People all over the world are experiencing COVID-19 fatigue, we’re all tired. This has been on for seven months now in the country and almost ten months globally, since December. But unfortunately, while we are getting tired, the virus does not tire, it doesn’t realise that we are getting tired, in fact, to the virus, this is an opportunity to spread.

“Therefore, we must sustain our approach because of the impact the virus has, not only on our lives, but also on our livelihoods.

“For clarity, we are not convinced that we are flattening the curve, we can only be convinced, we can only confirm this, we can only know where we are with the infection rate with aggressive testing,” Aliyu said.

He said that the reported over 1,200 tested samples on Sunday was low, despite that weekend tests are usually low.

He said, “But this is so quite low. Our capacity as a country for testing is about 10,000 tests per day so you can see that this is clearly insufficient.

“We all have a responsibility to avoid a second wave of the virus, just like we are seeing in other parts of the world now, by increase in cases that could result in additional restrictions, which could drag us back to where we were before and this will have an adverse impact on our economy. We must therefore avoid a similar situation happening here.”

The PTF National Coordinator added that the task force had released N1bn each to 32 state governments for the purposes of driving the COVID-19 response, urging state governments to use the fund for the purposes it was released.

Aliyu added, “We have released money to 32 state governments recently; each state government was given N1bn, for the purpose of driving COVID-19 responses and we are asking them to please prioritise testing in addition to surveillance activities linked COVID-19.

“We urge state governments to please publicise their sample collection locations so that people can access them.”