Cross River State Government has accused the Federal Ministry of Health and the Nigeria Centre Diseases for Control (NCDC) of shipping positive and negative test kits and cartridges to Nigeria Navy Reference Hospital in Calabar to allegedly violate the state’s COVID-19 free status.
The government made this allegation on the same day that the lawmaker representing the Obudu state constituency in the Cross River State House of Assembly, Godwin Akwaji died of fever and other COVID-19 symptoms at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital Isolation centre.
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The government said it will not allow the training on COVID-19 to hold or for the said materials and equipment to enter the state.
The Commissioner for Information, Asu Okang and the Commissioner for Health, Dr Beta Edu, who doubles as chairman of the COVID-19 response team, said the move was unacceptable and suspicious.
She said the government will resist any attempt to inflict on the state the COVID-19 index case through the pretense of conducting training to test cases.
They wondered why the federal government and NCDC should use the Navy hospital and not the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital or other open federal facilities for the training.
Okang said the navy should also resist attempts to be used to transmit the virus to the people of the state, stressing that the navy already had a case of land grabbing, which had strained the relationship with the state government.
Cross River is the only state in Nigeria that is yet to record any confirmed case in the country.
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