The Federal Government has on Monday given precise reasons it could not lockdown seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) with high burden of COVID-19 in Lagos State as it would affect the whole state.
The National Coordinator of the Task Force on COVID-19, Dr. Aliyu Sani, made this known during the briefing of the PTF on Monday.
According to Sani, the government has not introduced lockdown in the 11 LGAs in Lagos and Bayelsa, due to the technical side of things.
“As I said earlier, Lagos had seven local governments. If you lockdown seven local governments in Lagos that are high burden you might as well lockdown the whole state,” he argued.
Sani further emphasised that there are technical reasons the FG could not do the lockdown, adding “provided we do all the other interventions and put in place all the other restrictions that we have the impact should really be very similar with that of a lockdown”.
The coordinator also noted that the task force would be meeting with governors and commissioners of health of nine new local government areas with high Covid-19 cases.
He emphasised the PTF added the nine new local government to the already existing eleven after carrying out a risk assessment analysis in the areas.
While divulging that 20 LGAs account for 50 per cent of COVID-19 cases in the country, he said Nigeria has recorded 46, 577 COVID-19 cases with 945 deaths.
“We have just reviewed our data for the high burden local government areas and we have expanded the number of local governments now to 20,” Sani said.
The national coordinator further assured Lagos and Bayelsa states that, “We are doing a lot of work with the first eleven local governments and we will be meeting with state governors and the commissioners of health for the new local governments – the additional nine that we have now included.”
