COVID-19: Nigeria Records Low Numbers, Advises Schools To Prepare To Reopen

Nigeria recorded the lowest daily cases of coronavirus in four months with 156 cases on Friday, September 4, 2020, according to the daily update by Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The update showed that the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria to be 54,743 with a decline in the number of recorded cases falling below 300 in the past two weeks.

This is coming when scientists continue to wonder why the pandemic has defied negative predictions of a devastating effect in Africa.

There is also a downward trend in the number of deaths from the virus in Nigeria with only three deaths on Friday.

Lagos recorded the highest number of cases with 36 and Niger State with only one case was the lowest among 17 states with positive cases on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government has given directives to schools to start the first phase of reopening processes.

The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr Sani Aliyu, announced the directive at the PTF briefing on Thursday, September 3.

“Educational institutions which include daycare, primary, secondary and tertiary institutions should begin the process of working towards potentially reopening within this phase.

“However, we strongly recommend that states conduct risk assessment to ensure that all schools are at a level of compliance and create a monitoring mechanism to access and monitor this level of compliance.”

The government advised that all daycare and educational institutions remain closed to in-passing classes until this level of risk was assessed.

It said if there would be reopening up schools, “it must be staged and preferably carried out in phases to ensure that this does not pose a risk to the general public, and in particular developer bill groups that might end up getting infected by students going back home.”