Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja.
The Federal Government has decried the fact that a lot of Nigerians were referring to the coronavirus pandemic as scam, saying they are not being fair to families that have lost loved ones to the virus.
National Coordinator of Presidential Taskforce on coronavirus, Dr. Sani Aliyu, said this at the Thursday’s briefing of the PTF.
He warned that the number or cases were increasing hence the need for Nigerians to protect themselves. For every case, there are thousands that we are missing.
Aliyu said only an insane nation will destroy its economy in the name of a scam.
He added that the government couldn’t have introduced restrictions based on suspicions; warning that COVID-19 knows no race and class.
The coordinator said: “Today I’ll be talking about disbelief, I will be tackling headlong the issue of why people feel that COVID-19 does not exist.
“We are aware that many Nigerians do not believe that COVID-19 is real, many think that it is a scam or a ploy to access funds meant for public welfare, some do not believe it’s real simply because they have not seen or do not know someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
“But tell me how many of you have seen a case of Ebola, how many of you have seen even a case of Lassa or even some of the common infections?
“You do not need to come across a patient with a life-threatening transmissible infection before you believe in it.
“There are people who do not believe it’s real because they are not seeing the sort of high number of deaths or the health crisis that is currently occurring in many parts of the world, but our numbers are already increasing.
“We don’t want to reach that stage, but if we don’t want to reach that stage, we have to take those measures that are necessary to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
“A reasonable number of people still believe it’s a disease that affects other countries but not Nigeria. Well, I’m afraid we are all humans and Nigerians there’s nothing special about us that provides us with resistance against COVID-19, none.
“As the chair said our climate is very similar to that of Brazil, the health system is much more sophisticated than that of Nigeria but you can see the sort of problems they are currently facing.
“We must start believing in COVID if we are to protect ourselves from this infection. The truth everyone must know is that COVID-19 is real, people are dying from covid-19.
“We have had personal experiences of that. There are people that are currently not with us at the moment because of COVID-19.
“Many countries in the world are fighting this pandemic. Over nine million people have tested positive, not suspicion, but tested positive for the disease and at least 22,000 of them are in Nigeria.
“There are thousands more in our country, for everyone case there are a handful of cases that we are missing because we are not able to test everybody.
“Governments across the world and even in Nigeria have shut down their economies and lost valuable resources in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19.
“The containment measures that were put in place to protect the public are there to protect the public, they’re not there to swindle them.
“No sane country on Earth will destroy its own economy willingly, no sane country on Earth will take major decisions that they know would be detrimental to their economy, even among the strong economy some of them have had significant drops in their GDP as a result of containment strategies.
“They will not take those steps likely, no, and certainly if our generation, for our generation this is the most important Public Health Emergency of its kind.
“When was the last time people have been locked in their houses for five weeks? when was the last time we close our Civil Service completely? When was the last time we stopped flights from coming in, we haven’t had international flights that are scheduled for a long time.
“So we’re living in really challenging times and we couldn’t have taken these decisions just on the basis of maybe suspicion that a disease exists.
“This disease does exist whether we like it or not. It exists if we want to survive it we have to start believing in it.
“The profile of infected people has shown us that COVID-19 knows no class, it knows no race or gender and it can certainly affect anyone who is exposed to it.
“We do not need to know someone personally who has died from COVID-19 to believe it is real. In fact, I think it is a disservice and it is insensitive to those families that have lost loved ones for people to continue to claim that covid-19 does not exist.
“The PTF is appealing to Nigerians to assist the government and all our partners at all levels to fight against this virus by taking ownership of this fight and this is by following strictly all the health advisories we have provided including always wearing a face mask properly not on your chin, not to cover your beard but to cover your face and your nose, maintain physical distancing at all times, avoid Mass Gatherings, wash hands frequently with soap and water, use hand sanitizer and disinfect surfaces.
“We may be relaxing some of the measures we put earlier on but the relaxation does not mean that we are at a lower risk of catching this as I keep on saying now today you are at a much much higher risk of catching covid If you go into a public space than you would ever have been in this country because of the numbers we have and if you do not need to go out stay at home that is still the best advice we can give you.
“Let us not wait for the virus to reach disastrous proportions before we begin to believe and act, we are already seen this happen in many other countries, we must learn from their experiences to mitigate preventable fatalities.
“We know that humankind has survived previous pandemics. We know that this challenge will pass. We also know that for us to be able to face this we must not we must not despair. We must face this challenge headlong together and survived it.”