Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Kano State Governor Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje on Tuesday ordered the lockdown of Kano State as part of measures to check the spread of COVID-19 in the state.
The governor who issued the order at the end of a meeting with the Council of Ulama which took place at the Government House disclosed that the directive would come into effect from 10 pm on Thursday.
Ganduje informed the resident of the state that “we have received another unfortunate information confirming the fourth case of COVID-19 virus in the state.”
“Earlier on, we had one elderly person, who had travelled to Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos and Kano and came in with the virus. He visited so many places, namely mosques, markets and today, those whom he contacted are being traced, and we found that out of the first batch of his 18 contacts, one of them had returned positive while the other 17 were negative.”
The governor regretted that the big problem was that the index case had contacts with more than a 100 people in the state.
“Also another people came from Turkey and they were confirmed positive of the virus. They too have had contacts with several people and therefore stock is being taken to find out the people they had contacted,” the governor added.
Ganduje said that “we started with prevention-is-better-than-cure by locking our borders, by closing our schools and by requesting civil servants to stay at home. But now, it is absolutely necessary that we must impose a stay-at-home directive.
“I am happy that the Ulamas have agreed that we should stay at home instead of (observing) Friday prayers. The people should not go to the Mosque on Fridays. This is to prevent the spread of the virus,” Ganduje announced.
“There would be no more outing in the state. Complete lockdown! No more markets, no more going to the mosque! We should stay at home and we should pray at home,” he stated.
He said that the state government has set up the three isolation centres which in all have a total of 750-bed capacity, adding that they were set to take over some hotels in the state as an interim holding spot for those who results were being awaited from the lab.
