NEWS
Hospitals won’t be able to handle second wave of COVID-19 — NCDC
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control raise alarm over the second wave of the virus saying the country is now reaching a critical level and that the hospital capacity will no longer be able to cope with more serious COVID-19 cases.
The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, said this in a series of tweets on Monday while reacting to the spike in COVID-19 infections in the last one month.
Ihekweazu said this as the fear of COVID-19 spread at the National Identity Management Commission grew on Monday because Nigerians besieged the NIMC offices following the workers’ suspension of the strike they embarked upon on Thursday.
Recall that Nigerians have been trooping to the NIMC offices since December 14, 2020 when the Federal Government ordered telecommunications firms to disconnect telephone lines of subscribers who failed to link their NIN to their subscriber identification modules.
No fewer than 164 million Nigerians, whose telephone lines could be disconnected on the grounds of not having the NIN, have been thronging NIMC offices, disregarding COVID-19 protocols such as wearing of face masks and social distancing.
The matter came to a head on Thursday when the NIMC workers began a strike over the fear of COVID-19 spread in the agency.
The President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, NIMC unit, Asekokhai Lucky, had exclusively told topnaija on Thursday that three workers of the agency at its headquarters had been infected with COVID-19.
The NCDC boss said Nigerians must note that the 100,000 persons that contracted COVID-19 in the last 11 months were not just figures but persons.
“Most important of all, the 100,000 cases and over 1,000 deaths are not just numbers. These are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, friends whose deaths will be mourned and the pain of their loss deeply felt. The response starts and ends with the people of this country,” he said.
