The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu had said that the country will not return to normalcy as it was before the coronavirus outbreak until 2021.
Ihekweazu said this on The Platform, an annual event of Covenant Christian Centre on Saturday. He maintained that it would be difficult to avoid mass gathering but it would be the best option for us.
While responding to questions on the fight against the coronavirus, the expert noted that the worst is yet to come, he said“We really are at the beginning of this outbreak globally,”
Ihekweazu added, “The point where we will assess how many people died in Nigeria versus everywhere else — it may be a year or two when we look back to the evolution of this outbreak. You can see that the outbreak comes in waves. We are not sure where we are on our own trajectory at the moment. It’s early days to reach conclusions around mortality.”
He added that social distancing is a sacrifice that“we will have to make as a people to get over this.”
He noted that members of the public will have to need to rethink how they comport themselves in business, social gatherings such as weddings and religious gatherings within the period.
According to him, “We are faced with a difficult reality and we are not unique in this. Every country is, right now, looking at the same challenge and how to get us back to some level of normalcy.
“But the reality is that we are going to live with COVID-19 for the next year, at the very least. So, we have to start thinking about how to live safely with COVID-19.
“Some of the changes we will need to make are actually good things to have forever. With the emphasis on handwashing, (use of) sanitizers and respiratory hygiene, my goal as the leader of the NCDC is that we continue doing this forever.”
He also said such a habit would prevent the spread of COVID-19, as well as many other diseases.
“I hope we don’t go back, like we did post-Ebola, to an era of not washing our hands. Who would want that? So, we really want some of these measures to go on,”
The NCDC DG noted that his team and many others across the country were working hard, adding that the state government and their care facilities were providing care for all those infected.
