‘Nigerians sharing, picking face masks from dump sites’

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Chairman, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, says his team was aware of the ongoing practice of sharing and picking of face masks for recycling from dump sites.

This, according to the SGF, places a lot of responsibilities on all Nigerians to be self-educated and to educate others.

Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at the daily briefing of the PTF, Mustapha said: “With the exception of fabric masks, every disposable used mask is a hazardous medical waste and should be disposed of properly, preferably by burning; it’s very risky to share masks as the virus is capable of remaining on surfaces for several hours and you could get infected.”

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He also advised that children be kept away from their grandparents to avoid any transmission.

The SGF said the pandemic required a great deal of investment in strengthening the nation’s primary health care system, the manpower and the infrastructure.

He urged other corporate citizens and public-spirited individuals to play significant roles by injecting the much-needed investment into the rural health infrastructure.

“The PTF continues to urge state governments to align their actions and enforcement with the guidelines provided. The virus does not respect boundaries neither does it respect status.”

He urged state governments to strengthen their monitoring and enforcement machineries in collaboration with the security agencies.

‘No vaccine till 2021’

Also, the SGF said his team is not expecting any vaccine to be available until the end of 2021.

He said: “Ordinarily, from the little literature I’ve read on COVID 19, is that we’re not expecting any vaccine to be on the shelves until towards the end of 2021.

“That’s for industries that have perfected the processes of manufacturing of this vaccine.

“We’re so much in a hurry to obtain a homegrown cure and all the countries of the world are doing similar things – trying to abridge even the processes of the trial to shorten the time.

“My encouragement to our people, to our researchers and those that are involved in the processes of manufacturing drugs, especially our home-grown cure, they should be patient and they should run it through a process. That’s the only way we can have it validated.

“My appeal to our home-grown researchers and those that are involved is: let them be patient, let them go through the protocol of validation so that at the end of it if their drugs or their syrup or whatever they produce is found fit for human consumption or administration, they’ll receive the appropriate certification.”