By Haruna Gimba
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire has warned that Nigeria was at risk of registering high incidences of the Delta variant of COVID-19.
He blamed it on neglect of preventive measures at Airports and other points of entry in the country.
Speaking at the ministerial briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja, Ehanire decried that inspite of evidence of the emergence of a third wave in the country, passengers were absconding quarantine at all points of entry.
The minister also expressed concerns that citizens had refused to adhere to public health advisories, even as treatment bed occupancy was also registering an increase.
He expressed this concern while noting that countries that were popular travel destinations for Nigerians, including the UK, U.S., UAE, France and Turkey had high incidence of this virulent variant.
“Nigeria is at increased risk if we continue to neglect public health protocols placed at points of entry, which are our first line of defense and a critical point of concern.
“The ministry’s Point of Entry (PoE) pillar of the COVID-91 response has been continuously monitoring passenger arrivals especially from high-risk countries like India, Turkey and Brazil.
“This process has been an arduous one given that port health staff have continued to report a trend of absconding by quarantined passengers, an act detrimental to our pandemic response and public health safety.
“The severity of this disease should NOT be disregarded as it is still a primary cause of concern, even in countries with stronger health systems,” he said.
The minister, therefore, tasked all persons to comply with the Port Health staff or risk facing sanctions, which included prosecution.
“Non-compliance with their directives constitutes a risk to national health security and will be handled with commensurate severity. I wish to re-emphasise that we must fervently avoid complacency and continue to abide by the given Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions.
“Remember that Nigeria is a well-traversed country and is susceptible to further importation of the virus, especially when there is clear evidence that the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has begun across the continent,” he added.
The minister further stressed that in the past 24 hours, the world witnessed an increase in reported cases of COVID-19 across a significant number of countries, due to the high transmissibility of the Delta Variant.
“As of July 25, Nigeria had a total of 170,895 COVID-19 cases, and 2,132 fatalities. There are 4,180 active cases across the country, including 216 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours from seven states.
“Nigeria started recording an increase in cases after the first case of the delta variant was reported early July,” he stressed.
In preparation for the third wave, Ehanire said the ministry had taken steps to urgently scale-up and enhance local oxygen capacity even before oxygen consumption increased.
He also said Nigeria had invested directly and strategically to ensuring oxygen availability to avert unforeseen incidence of oxygen insufficiency for COVID-19 patients in the country.
On COVID-19 vaccines, the minister said that Nigeria was expecting over 29 million of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
He said that the vaccine was purchased by the Government of Nigeria through the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) facility and over four million of the Moderna.
He also said that Nigeria is expecting almost 700 thousand of the AstraZeneca vaccine, through the COVAX facility from bilateral donations from the governments of the U.S. and the UK as well as Pfizer and Sinopharm from both bilateral agreements and through the COVAX facility.
