Dayo Ojerinde
Dayo Ojerinde
The head of emergency operations centre of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr Everistus Aniaku, has urged Nigerians to continue observing the COVID-19 protocols.
Aniaku, on the sidelines of the public health emergency management basic three professional development training in Lagos, said being vaccinated does not call for the disregard of COVID-19 safety protocols.
He said, “Some countries are witnessing the third and fourth wave of the virus, but we have been able to manage the response in Nigeria. We’ve done well and now that we are at a de-escalation phase, the entire response has moved from the higher authority to the lower one.
We are doing very well in containing the virus; we are not there yet but we are not relenting; we are still conducting our daily epidemic intelligence gathering. With the number of testing centres in the country, the states are also doing well.
“The testing rate has reduced and the positivity rate has dropped as well, but people are also aware that when they have COVID-19 like symptoms, they should go for testing.
“Vaccination doesn’t mean we should lose guard; it can never be. The Federal Government has put up a law that every person has to use a facemask. If people are walking around without wearing their masks, it is unethical and very wrong,” Aniaku said.
He added that the five-day training which began on Monday was supported by the United States Centre for Disease Control and Georgetown University, Washington DC.
“We are building the capacity of the national and subnational frontline responders. We are training them on epidemic intelligence gathering, responding to any type of outbreaks, using the global acceptable model responses outbreaks and managing any emerging disease outbreak,” Aniaku said.
Also, the NCDC’s director, health emergency preparedness and response, Dr John Oladejo, said the training was designed to support how disease outbreaks should be mitigated, managed at federal, state and local government levels.
He said, “The programme is to give an insight into public health emergency operation centres, how they are being run as well as given case scenarios on public health emergency operation centres.”