AN additional 265 cases of coronavirus infection were recorded across the country on Saturday with Lagos State alone recording 133.
All 215 Nigerians who recently returned by special flight from the United Kingdom were let home from isolation after testing negative to the coronavirus.
A breakdown of the new cases released at 11.51 yesterday by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is as follows: 133-Lagos; 34-Oyo; 28-Edo; 23-Ogun; 22-FCT; 6-Plateau; 5-Kaduna; 3-Borno; 3-Niger; 2-Kwara; 2-Bauchi; 2-Anambra and 2-Enugu.
The NCDC has recorded a total of 7526 cases since the first case.
Two thousand, one hundred and seventy four cases have been discharged while 221 have died.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State in an update yesterday said 45 fully recovered patients made up of 22 females and 23 males were discharged.
He said that with this, number of patients successfully managed and discharged from our Isolation facilities has risen to 707.
In Abuja, the NCDC discharged all 215 Nigerian who recently returned home from the UK after completing over two weeks in isolation.
All the returnees, according to the clearance certificate, tested Negative to the Coronavirus.
They were subsequently discharged.
Health workers in Kaduna State have embarked on a seven-day warning strike despite threat of sack by Governor Nasir El-Rufai.
The State Healthcare Workers Unions and Associations are protesting deduction of 25 per cent from their members’ salaries.
Resident doctors at the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Ogun State, also said they may go on strike if their negotiations with the state government for improved pay collapsed.
The Kaduna health workers unions and associations in a communique at the end of a joint meeting in Kaduna recalled how the national and state executive councils of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) prevailed on doctors in the state to call off their strike to be able to join in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
They dismissed suggestions that their strike was an attempt to blackmail the state in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic.
They said: “Kaduna State Government deducted 25% of the salaries from about 11000 of Healthcare workers in the midst of COVID 19 (April and May). This action was done in violation of section 5 of the Labour Act.
“Kaduna State Government paid between 150,000 to 450,000 naira as Occupational Safety incentives to about 300 selected HCWs and non HCWs working as staff or volunteer in the IDCC and isolation centre or serving in some of the Covid 19 pillars. Less than 2% of the HCWs in the State benefited from the packages.
“The promised 10% incentives for other HCWs, though inadequate, is yet to be paid. Most HCWs that were infected with Covid 19 are from health facilities outside the IDCC and isolation centres and none of them has been paid the purported N100,000 daily for 10 days.
“None of our members working in hospitals has been contacted to give their details for the widely publicized N5million and the N2 million life and disability insurance respectively.
“All health workers are exposed to varying degrees of risk of infectious diseases such as Covid 19, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDs, Lassa fever, Ebola fever among others.
“There are no adequate PPEs in the State hospitals as evidenced by Patients buying their own gloves, HCWs getting their own personal facemask and eye goggles among other basic PPEs.”
Governor El-Rufa’I’s Special Adviser on Media and Communication, Muyiwa Adekeye, had on Thursday said government rejected the strike threat and “will regard persons who fail to show up at their assigned places of work as having forfeited their employment.’’
In a similar development, resident doctors at the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Ogun State, are on strike after the collapse of their negotiations with the state government on improved pay.
The doctors under the aegis of the Association of Resident Doctors at the OOUTH said they were unable to reach agreements with their employers on some of their demands.
The association, in a letter to Governor Dapo Abiodun, said its members had resolved to work only during week days and stay at home at weekends.
The doctors however said their members working at the COVID-19 isolation centres would not be part of the strike.
They hoped the state government “will wake up to its responsibility and our congress shall review in two weeks, if any worthwhile transformation occurs.
“We have decided to leave our members working directly in the COVID-19 treatment centres to go on with their duties uninterrupted within this additional two-week wait, after which we will reappraise and determine what next,” they said. (The Nation)
