In his address to the nation, on Monday, April 13th, 2020, President Muhammadu Buhari spoke on Nigeria’s response to coronavirus (COVID-19) and measures put in place by the Federal Government of Nigeria to eradicate the outbreak as quickly as possible.

He extended the lockdown in Lagos State, FCT and Ogun State for another 14 days, in an effort to eradicate coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country.

Buhari spoke, with key highlights on response activities put in place by the health sector.

As at today, a total of 323 confirmed cases of #COVID19 has been recorded and unfortunately 10 deaths. We continue to intensify our contact tracing efforts. 92% of the contacts of confirmed cases have been identified.

Our objective remains to contain the spread of the #COVID19 & provide time & resources for an aggressive & collective action. As a result of the overwhelming support & cooperation received, we achieved a lot during this initial lockdown of 14 days.

In the last 14 days we raised our testing capacity to 1,500 tests per day. Lagos & Abuja now have capacity to admit some 1,000 patients each across several treatment centres.

As a nation, we are on the right track to win the fight against #COVID19. According to the NCDC, a proportion of new infections are now occurring in our communities, through person-to-person contacts.

I urge #Nigerians to continue to #TakeResponsibility in implementing recommended measures. We must not lose the gains achieved thus far.

Therefore it has become necessary to extend the current restriction of movement in Lagos, Ogun & the FCT for another 14 days effective from 11:59pm on Monday, 13th of April, 2020.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.