PRESS BRIEFING BY HON. MINISTER OF HEALTH, DR. OSAGIE EHANIRE AT THE PRESIDENTIAL TASK FORCE ON COVID-19 PRESS BRIEFING ON MONDAY 26TH OCTOBER, 2020
Protocol
As at today, we have recorded a total of 61,992 confirmed cases from 607,435 persons tested for COVID while 57,465 cases have been discharged. We have sadly lost 1,130 persons to the disease.
2. We now have 3,397 active cases as more persons are treated and discharged with case fatality rate of 1.8%. This is less than the case fatality rate of 2.4% in Africa and the global rate of 2.8%. We are not relenting in our efforts to ensure that the case fatality rate continues to decline as we focus on improvement in case management capacity and ensure availability of equipment and medical consumables for our health workers.
3. With the decline in the number of active cases and the number of cases on admission drops, some Isolation Centres in the country are already making arrangements to rationalize the number of frontline health personnel into the reserve pool or redeployed. This would be done in a manner that will allow easy re-mobilization where necessary.
4. We however advise states and relevant stakeholders not to completely close all Isolation centres due to consistent lack of patients but some centres should rather be maintained. This is to ensure promptness and readiness against any surge as part of l preparation against possible second wave.
5. We are taking advantage of these low active cases to carry out appraisal and reappraisal of activities at the isolation centres. This is necessary to assess and understand areas of strengths, weaknesses, available opportunities as well as dangers. Such activities will consolidate gains while taking measures to prevent re-occurrence of errors as well as deployment of appropriate resources.
6. We are also making arrangements for stock taking and repurposing of equipment earlier deployed to temporary isolation centres with a view to using the opportunity provided by the resource Mobilisation for the COVID-19 response for health systems strengthening.
7. I shall again use this opportunity to appeal to our youths to stop crashing our Medical Stores. Most of the medicines and medical consumables in these stores are stored under controlled environmental conditions such as temperatures and humidity. Disruption of these conditions would render them ineffective and in some cases poisonous. The NCDC warehouse in idu is used for the storage of medical and laboratory consumables and equipment. Destruction of these items will impact negatively on our response to this pandemic. I also call on all who are in possession of vaccines, medicine and other equipment and consumables to please return them. Those that can still be salvaged will be used and those that cannot will be disposed of properly.
8. I shall close by advising the general public to continue to practise the non-Pharmaceutical interventions prescribed by infectious diseases experts, including hand washing, use of face masks, hand sanitizers and social distancing in order to control community spread of the disease.
9. Thank you.
