There were mounting concerns yesterday that COVID-19 pandemic might be going through the roof as confirmed cases rose sharply by 86, bringing the tally to 627.
The rise was the highest in a single day since its breakout in the country on February 27, with Lagos State having 70 of the new cases.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which has said no country or state could fight the virus alone and called for cooperation in ridding the country of the virus, announced last night that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recorded seven new cases, Akwa Ibom three, Katsina three, Borno one, Bauchi one, and Jigawa one.
It said 170 cases had been discharged while 21 deaths had been recorded in the country.
There was, however, good news: the Private Sector-led Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) said yesterday that it was set to distribute N23 billion worth of food items to 10 million Nigeria in 1.6 million households.
The distribution of the food items, billed to begin next week, is to cushion the effects of the hardship foisted on the people by the restrictions imposed on many parts of the country by the federal and state governments to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coalition will also today unveil strategies to help free Nigeria from the pandemic just as the Lagos State Government has set up sampling stations in 20 local government areas of the state to facilitate community testing.
However, amid speculation that the virus might have spread to Borno State, the state government yesterday said it was still waiting for the result of the first suspected case in the state, who happened to be a dead nurse.
Lagos State also recorded another death with the demise of an 83-year-old woman, just as it has clarified that it has no policy against the release of corpses of persons who tested positive for COVID-19 for burial.
Announcing the planned distribution of the N23 billion food items during the coalition’s inspection of its yet-to-be-completed 200-bed space isolation facility yesterday at the Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH) in Yaba, the President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, said the palliative would be shared in all the 774 local government areas in the country.
He said: “This coalition is not only involved in medical intervention, we are involved in food distributions to Nigerians. We are buying N23 billion worth of food items to be distributed during this lockdown, as food is very important in sustaining the stay-at-home order.
“Nigeria has about 200 million people. So we will be distributing the food items to five per cent of the country’s population, and that amounts to 10 million Nigerians.
You know on the average, each household has six persons, which means we will be reaching 1.6 million households in the country will food items. We hope to roll this out within the next 10 days.”
He listed the food items to be distributed to each of the 1.6 million households to include 10kg of rice, two cartons of noodles, one carton of spaghetti, five kg of sugar and one kg of salt.
“This will be in phases, but this is the first we will do as part of palliatives to Nigerians,” he stated.
He added that so far, the coalition has raised N25 billion, noting that efforts are still being put in place to get more funds.
The Chief Executive Officer, Access Bank, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, said the coalition, comprising about 50 organisations would be represented in all states of the federation to provide support to the government in the fight against COVID-19.
He said the yet-to-be-completed 200-bed space isolation centre in IDH, Yaba was being replicated in some other states, adding that the idea is to ensure Nigerians who tested positive for COVID-19 adequately get the needed care.
He said: “When we are done with the isolation centres, we will hand them over to the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, which will, in turn, hand them over to the various state governments where they are being built.
“On the palliatives, you can see many Nigerians are already restive because of a lack of food. So, our plan is to take the items to each state, then to all local governments and most importantly, all wards in Nigeria. We will take it to the bottom of the pyramid so that poor Nigerians will not miss out on the palliatives.”
On how these food items will be distributed to the grassroots in the country, he said the Dangote Group had been involved in the distribution chain for a long time, adding that its structure would be used in achieving the goal.