Plateau governor charges residents to adhere strictly to regulations, says ‘COVID-19 is real’

Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, Sunday charged the people of the state to adhere strictly to regulations put in place by the government to check the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

Lalong, who was responding to the increase in the COVID-19 cases in the state at a media briefing in Jos, said the development called for concerted efforts by all and sundry to stop community spread of the virus.

He also expressed surprise that some people still doubt the existence of COVID-19, saying such persons should ha a rethink because he just lost two of his friends to the disease.

He said: “My message to the people of Plateau State is to commend them for complying with the regulations we put in place. If we had not taken the steps we adopted, the situation will have been more worrisome. This is the time to concentrate on contact tracing to be able to ascertain the magnitude of the pandemic on our people.

“The best thing is to check and address it instead of sitting and arguing. Already, the index case has been treated ad discharged while the others are doing well.

“We are now going into aggressive enforcement of the regulations we rolled out as that is the best way for us to contain the rising cases. From all the cases we have, there is none that originated within the State. All of them are from people who sneaked into the State from our borders despite the closure.

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“We will not allow this to continue especially at this time that we are doing contact tracing and working hard to curb community spread. It is sad and unfair for people to take this position and try to instigate others to disregard our regulations. COVID-19 is real and for me, I lost two friends recently, one in Lagos and the other in Bauchi. They were both classmates and lawyers. Let us not put people at risk by not only being careless, but discouraging them from doing the right thing. I appeal to our people to take serious precautions and stay at home while observing all the regulations.”

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