The Governor of Cross River State, Gov. Ben Ayade, in a live media chat with Channels Television on Thursday, disclosed why Cross River State has not had any confirmed case of Coronavirus Disease since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
Essentially speaking, I would like to also commend my colleague the Governor of Kogi State for doing his best to keep Kogi COVID-19 free. I would have better information on my own state and give my own perspective . As you are well aware, as we started reading in papers and watching on television globally, the impact of this pandemic, what we did instead was to quickly respond to it by locking out our State against the virus. So we didn't actually lock down, locked out our State and blocked our border immediately and commenced no mass no movement. So we started right on time, we are proactive, and we have considered sustaining that.
But you are also aware that by virtue of our location, we are just sharing a boundary with the Cameroonians and it’s such that it's almost impossible that we are still having all COVID-19 cases Negative. So what we did was, we ordered over 100 brand new vehicles, policed all our borders between Nigeria and Cameroon, including the legal and illegal, ensuring that we blocked out all access to other States coming in or going out of Cross River State. Closed our airways - in fact, if you remember, a team of 35 Americans flew in from the US, got into Lagos, got clearance and flew into calabar. I refused them landing until I got a certificate from NCDC that they are COVID-19 free.
We have been very very deliberate, our structural and normative action plan is so firm. I lead from the front. I spent nights myself personally at vigil in our various entry and exit points to demonstrate to my Commissioners, Senior Special Advisers and Special Advisers, that if the Governor himself can spend night at our border points, you should do so. So our border points are being manned by only very Senior Government Officials to ensure there is no compromise at the points. I think that's the strategy that has really worked for us.
Governor Ayade furthered that his government trains about 400 surveillance officers, every two weeks, and every health Center has sufficient manpower who visits public and private hospitals in order to ascertain if any patient developed COVID-19 symptoms while issuing the the State's COVID-19 emergency numbers.
He commended the proactiveness of the State Commissioner of Health and the State Ministry of Health who respond quickly in collecting samples of a suspected case for testing, contact tracing and in watch them over time while confirming that the state has received commendations from the NCDC and Federal Government for their efforts resulting in having all suspected cases testing Negative.
Reacting to the speculation of the people who fear that the low testing rate in the State could hide the virus and trigger its explosion in the near future, Governor Ayade noted that the NCDC may not be able to test everyone since the testing process is not simple and could gulp the Nigeria economic, hence people are being tested upon suspecting symptoms of the virus.
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