Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire has described as worrisome the resurgence of COVID-19 infection amongst health workers.
He said this at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 on Thursday.
According to him, “We are concerned by the resurgence of infection in healthcare workers.
“In a bid to sustain the gains we have made in reducing the rate of infection among our health workers, we have made training and retraining of health workers on infection prevention and control.
“In Abia state, we have concluded the training of 594 Healthcare Workers from private and public health facilities on infection prevention and control.
“We are currently investigating healthcare associated infection in a health facility in Kaduna State. Lessons learnt from this will be used to improve service delivery.”
He charged the health workers to be more careful, saying: “I encourage our health workers not to drop their guards as the pandemic is still with us. Use your PPEs appropriately and judiciously. We have ensured that PPEs are available in all our health facilities.”
Ehanire also charged the youths to be more careful and take adequate precautions against COVID-19, stating that “this pandemic has had its impact on our young people. As at yesterday, 46 percent of positive cases in the country are young people between ages 21-40. I will therefore appeal to our youths to take responsibility. Let us ensure that we adhere to the advisories to wear face masks appropriately, regularly wash your hands and ensure respiratory hygiene.”
The minister also emphasized that “our target remains to test one percent of our population across the country. As of today, more than 70 percent of all the tests conducted have been in nine states including Lagos, Kano, FCT, Plateau, Oyo, Kaduna, Edo Ogun Rivers with 25 percent of the tests in Lagos alone.
“We shall continue to work with state governments to ramp up case findings and sample collection activities.”