Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha has revealed that Nigeria is yet to reach the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mustapha, who said this while speaking to reporters in Abuja on Sunday, explained that;
We have not reached the peak yet and I would not want to fool Nigerians by telling them that we are out of the woods. As we even open up and accommodate more enterprises, because we are trying to have a balance between livelihoods and life, there is a likelihood of increase in transmission in cases.
This comes as Nigeria’s total coronavirus infections toll spikes to 10,162 cases as at May 31st.
Despite the massive figure of cases, Mustapha, who is also the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), expressed hope, saying Nigeria has achieved some successes in tackling the virus.
He said;
We are winning. As a matter of fact, you juxtapose the rate of cases with our fatality rate, which is basically about three per cent, in other countries and other climes, it’s over 10 per cent.
But the most important thing that you will realise is when we started this exercise, we had only five testing stations, now we’ve ramped it up to 28, without the expected increase in the number of deaths. We have gone beyond 60,000 now. That reflects in the number of confirmed cases.
Members of the PTF on Sunday submitted to President Buhari their recommendations on partial reopening of schools, places of worships and some additional businesses.
Mustapha expressed that the PTF has no problem with state governments that ordered reopening of places of worships, in view of the power given to the states to do so by the constitution.
He said;
The states are sub-nationals. That’s part of what we have considered in its totality. We will await Mr President on that, once I receive his approval, going forward, to certain recommendations we have put in place, we will know how that would happen.
