Following the authorisation by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 for religious centres to re-open, the PTF has also advised persons above the age of 55 to avoid churches and mosques.
The PTF National Coordinator, Dr Aliyu Sani, also urged people with underlying medical conditions, including HIV, diabetes and cancer to stay at home.
“We are strongly advising vulnerable individuals such as those with underlying conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HIV, cancer, and those above the age of 55 years to please stay at home and consider remote participation or non-contact attendance.
“When we look at the rate for persons who have died from COVI-19 in Nigeria, the case fatality rate; more than half of those that died were above the age of 50.
“Secondly, the case fatality rate if you are above the age of 50, is 17 percent. If you are above the age of 55, it is 18 percent. It is almost a one in five chances of dying if you catch COVID-19 and you fall within that group,” Dr. Sani said.
On Tuesday, the Presidential task force said places of worship had been identified as one of the red spots for contracting coronavirus. It added that this prompted the task force to issue advice to guide state governments in talks with religious leaders as regards re-opening religious centres.
The task force said all worship centres should keep records of attendees in order to help with contact tracing.
“Worshippers should be reminded to not attend in person if experiencing common symptoms of COVID-19, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, or have had close contact with an infected person in the last 14-days. All worshippers noted to have temperature or are symptomatic should be turned back and not allowed admission.
“Places of worship should ideally keep up to date record of their staff including contact details and if possible, a record of attendees of church services for instance or even small mosque to enable contact tracing in the event that somebody comes up positive.”
The government advised clerics to avoid home visitation, warning that places of worship that do not comply with the issued guidelines will not be allowed to operate by state governments.
“Churches are to open from 5 am and close by 8 pm. Each service should be for a maximum of one hour with an interval of 20-minutes in-between services to allow time for disinfection.”
Places of worship have been shut for about 2-months in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The advice comes as Nigeria, as of June 3, has 10,819 confirmed cases, 7,266 active cases and 314 deaths.
Advising that citizens should continue to take precautions, Dr. Sani said the viral infection had not gone away. He said Nigeria had moved to the third position in Africa, warning that there was risk of the country having the highest number of infected persons in the continent due to its population size.
“Now is not the time to relax. I hope I have made that clear.”
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