Adewale Sanyaolu and Chinwendu Obienyi
Fidelity Bank yesterday said it has mandated staff or immediate family member(s) who travel out the country for holidays to self-isolate for 2 weeks and obtain medical clearance before returning to work as part of its COVID-19 preventive and precautionary measures.
The process was said to have been activated and strictly adhered to by one of its staff members who returned from holidays in the United Kingdom.
The bank in a statement said the affected staff went into self-isolation after undergoing testing in line with the bank’s policy.
The management said the test results returned positive at the weekend against which he was quickly arranged to be moved to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), where he is currently being attended to by health officials.
“We are in constant touch with him and have been monitoring the situation closely. Our thoughts and prayers are with him.
Though the staff has not been at the bank since returning from the UK, he however brought some consignments for two other staff which were delivered to them individually.
We have self-isolated the two individuals and sent them for necessary testing. In addition the office where these two individuals work, has been temporarily shut and has been disinfected. Due to the proactive measures taken by the bank, contact tracing within the bank was very swift and conclusive with no customers involved. We have also shut down our Federal Secretariat, Abuja Business Office and advised all staff/vendors to self-isolate and go for testing in line with our policy on COVID-19, on account of possible exposure of a vendor staff.” the bank said
Meanwhile, activities at the nation’s two airports in Lagos were fully grounded yesterday following the partial lockdown of the state in the wake of the coronavirus attack.
This is because the Murtala Mohammed International Airport and the MM2 terminal 2 which were usually a beehive, turned a ghost town as very few persons were seen around. This was further exercebated by the shutdown of domestic operations by local airlines. Airlines counters were empty, with only few shops opened while officials of the Nigerian Customs, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Police and other paramilitary were sighted at the airport terminals helping to monitor compliance.
The Federal Government, had on March 21, announced the closure of all airports to international flights from March 23 as part of the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Some aviation stakeholders who spoke on the possible effects of the airports closure, said the economic implications on the nation’s airports would be phenomenal even as there were indications that the entire operations could be totally shut down in the days ahead.
Daily Sun findings revealed that compliance level was partial.
Big stores and medium ones, including Shoprite, Addide and Justrite all opened for business.
However, small community shops trading in small retail commodities obeyed the directive due to fear of police harrasment.
Some of the shoppers who spoke to Daily Sun said as long as the stores are opened for business, they have no choice than to come around to pick few items. However, some of the community stores that were no opened for business from 9am to 5pm, opened for business around 6pm, with the courage that the security operatives that would clamp down on them would have closed for the day. At the popular Oke-Odo food Market in Agbado Oke-Odo Local Council Development Area, it was business as usual as the directive by the State Government did not directly affect them.
Though operators at the market complainex about low turnout.
But investigations by Daily Sun, revealed that few stores particulary in the Ajegunle and Orile axis of Lagos opened for business.