By Daniel Tyokua
Bothered by the dreaded coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Capital Territory (FCTA) has inaugurated FCT Emergency Epidemic Response Committee, comprising representatives from the FCT Health Secretariat, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Federal Ministry of Health, World Health Organisation (WHO), Tertiary and Private Hospitals, amongst others.
At the inauguration on Sunday in Abuja, Acting Secretary of the FCT Health Secretariat, Mohammed Kawu, said the Committee has an Incident Manager, Lawal Ademola and is subdivided into eight functional units, such as: coordination, logistics and infection prevention and control.
Others are: epidemiology, surveillance and point of entry laboratory, risk Communication and social mobilization, case management and health and safety (welfare).
Kawu explained that the primary responsibility of the team is to confront the disease in all ramifications and curtail its spread in the nation’s capital.
“Although FCTA has been up and doing ensuring that everything is done to contain the disease but with the confirmation of cases in the FCT, emergency management and treatment is opened and FCT is inaugurating this team,” he stated.
Also speaking, Josephine Okechukwu, Director of FCT Public Health Department said for now there are four confirmed cases of the Covid-19 also known as coronavirus and three are responding to treatment and are stable while 39 cases are only suspected.
Okechukwu who said she personally interacted with the patients noted that one of them is not yet stabilized, noting that the said patient had a serious health issue before traveling abroad to seek medical attention and contracted the coronavirus.
While stressing that FCTA is well prepared to contain the pandemic, she explained that while isolation is for confirmed cases, quarantine is for suspected cases, warning that primary and secondary healthcare centres are not allowed to manage Covid-19.
“I want to assure FCT residents and Nigerians generally, there is no cause for panic. We all know that COVID-19 is just a respiratory tract infection, so it’s not something that is a death sentence. So let’s support people especially family members who have Covid-19, we shouldn’t stigmatise them.
“In FCT, as at now, we had 39 suspected cases, who have been screened for Covid-19, out of which, only four tested positive for the disease in the FCT.
“Three of them are very stable, but one is not too stable when I discussed with them this morning at the Gwagwalada Teaching Hospital,” the Public Health Director added.
Speaking on the earlier warning of the FCTA to religious leaders and worshipers to maintain a maximum of 50 persons in a congregation at a time, the Senior Special Assistant to Minister on Media and Strategic Communications, Abubakakar Sani said the Administration is satisfied with the level of compliance.
“I want to say that from what we observed today, the report we got from the field, the FCT Administration is satisfied with the level of compliance by most of the Churches today. Some of the churches that did not have the time to really sensitize their members we noticed large gathering,” she noted.
