Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Friday, raised the alarm that the country was in a critical situation with the increasing number of confirmed Covid-19 cases.
According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, the Vice President made the observation when he toured the facilities of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Reference Laboratory, Gaduwa, in Abuja.
The statement said the vice president was accompanied by the Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; Minister of State for Health, Olorunnimbe Mamora; and the Director-General, NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu.
Akande quoted Osinbajo as lamenting that “we have a critical situation on our hands currently with the increasing number of cases being recorded.”
Despite this, however, the vice president was further quoted as saying that a lot of progress has been made since Nigeria’s first case was reported in February 2020.
He said, “We have activated nearly 120 laboratories nationwide, 70 of them public laboratories, and have significantly ramped up our testing and case management capacity.
“We have expanded the footprint of our sovereign public health response capabilities especially at the sub-national level and in areas where previously such capabilities did not exist.
“Not so long ago, test samples had to be flown out of the country for examination. This is no longer the case as we now have the capacity to process samples internally.
“While we are not yet where we want to be as a nation, we are most certainly not where we were at the onset of the pandemic,” he said.
The vice president commended Nigeria’s public and private healthcare specialists and workers in the line of duty for ensuring the safety, cure and prevention of the majority of Nigerians from the Covid-19 virus, sometimes under extremely challenging circumstances.
He said, “Thousands of health professionals have been working tirelessly on Nigeria’s Covid-19 public health response.”
