COVID-19: Nigerian govt rules out lockdown on 11 high-burden LGAs

The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, said on Monday the Federal Government would not impose precision lockdowns on 11 high-burden local government areas of the country.

Aliyu, who stated this at the PTF daily briefing in Abuja, said locking down the LGAs would most certainly pull the entire states where such council areas belong into lockdown with them.

He added that the geographical nature of the LGAs made it rather impracticable to do isolated lockdown.

The coordinator, however, said the precision lockdown was just one out of many interventions the government could use to manage cases in the LGAs.

According to him, PTF is already working with the affected council areas through other means of intervention to reduce their high infection load, citing risk communication and community engagement activities as part of the ongoing works.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Nigerian govt extends Phase 2 of lockdown relaxation by one week

He said: “We have 11 high-burden local government areas we’ve identified. We are doing a lot of works in these local government areas, especially as it relates to risk communication and community engagement activities.

“We are also trying to improve testing, particularly in Lagos where seven of the 11 local governments are.

“We are improving case management, discussing with the various states in terms of improving access to care, access to oxygen, and so on.

“Precision lockdowns are only one out of the various options.

“The main problem we have with lockdowns in these areas is the geographical nature of the local governments.”

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