Nigeria should not start celebrating a recent consistent decline in the number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the country, the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 has said, attributing the decline to the low number of samples collected from states.
Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, made this disclosure on Monday in Abuja at the 62nd joint national briefing of the taskforce.
Mr Mustapha said, “In spite of the nation’s enhanced testing capacity, the number of samples collected for testing has not been encouraging.”
“While government has intensified its targeted testing strategy, it still urged the states to expand the scope of their sample collection”, he added
According to him, the global number of confirmed cases has exceeded the 25 million mark and is attributable to resurgence in countries hitherto considered to have effectively contained the virus.
“While a good number of countries that have relaxed restriction measures are actually re-introducing such, which in some cases are being made more stringent on the basis of lessons learned. The PTF has also observed that from the point the global numbers entered the 20th million; growth in cases has been on the average of a million cases every four to five days.
“This is a trend that deserves a lot of attention and the PTF is doing that. For us in Nigeria, the last three weeks have shown a slowdown in the number of confirmed cases.
“As the PTF has always maintained, early testing, detection, tracing and treatment remains the second-best option for dealing with this pandemic, with the first being staying safe.”
He implored Nigerians to get tested and present cases requiring treatment early to reduce avoidable fatalities.
“Testing positive for coronavirus is not a death sentence, not testing and concealing cases of symptoms and presenting late is what leads to death,” he said
Reports from NDDC on total number of sample tested stands at 403,347, with confirmed cases of 54,008 as at 31st of August 2020.
