The governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, said he has decided to give full insurance to frontline health workers and also increased their hazard allowance from 30,000 naira to 50,000 naira daily to encourage them to put in their best.
The governor made this known on Thursday night in Lokoja, Kogi state when officials of the National Center for Disease Control sent to ascertain the COVID-19 led by Dr Noah Andrew visited him.
According to him, the Kogi State Ministry of Health has deployed health personnel to all the 239 Wards of the State, 2 focal persons per ward, who constantly sensitise the people on the dangers of the virus, communicate news or even rumours of suspected cases to the incident committee or task force for investigation and also assist in contact tracing.
He said: “We have set up 3 modern Isolation/Containment Centres in the State having a combined capacity of 130-bed spaces. These facilities currently lie unused. It is our prayer and our determination that these isolation centres will remain vacant until the pandemic is over.
“We have provided emergency and toll-free numbers for the general public to call in and report suspected cases of Covid-19 at no cost whatsoever. We have also fielded many of such calls. All of them turned out to be false alarms upon investigation and did not meet the criteria from the NCDC for cases which should be sampled for testing.
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“In the circumstances, we cannot manufacture cases in order to be counted among the states which have recorded same. As a Governor I hear there are ‘benefits’ for having COVID-19 cases in your state, well, I am not interested.”
The governor thanked the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, and the Presidential Task Force for rising to the occasion. He said the world must unite to defeat the virus.
He said he has decided to give full insurance to frontline health workers and also increase their hazard allowance from 30, 000 naira to 50,000 naira daily to encourage them to put in their best.
Bello, however, said the state has resolved to comply with the protocols of the NCDC by putting the officials in quarantine for fourteen days and take their samples to ensure they are COVID-19 free.
Earlier, the team led by Dr Noah Andrew, who went to the Lugard house seat of the state government to present a letter titled “Deployment of rapid response squad to help in fighting Covid-19,” said that the mission of the centre was to provide logistics to all states of the Federation of which Kogi cannot be left out.
He said that two members of the team would be left behind to help the state and support her efforts of the state government already in place.
“We are here to support the state in shipping swab and samples and ascertain the preparedness of the state in fighting COVID-19.
He urged the government and people to observe social distancing and use face masks at all times as part of the measures to fight the scourge.
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