COVID-19: We’re yet to receive promised ventilators from US ― Minister

The Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said the Federal Government is yet to receive the promised ventilators from the United States of America (USA).

The minister said this at the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Coronavirus (COVID-19) daily news conference on Thursday in Abuja.

“To the best of my knowledge, the ventilators promised by the US President have not arrived Nigeria,” the minister said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that both President Muhammadu Buhari and Trump had a phone conversation at the request of Trump who promised to provide ventilators for Nigeria to fight COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister, however, said that the ventilators were yet to arrive in the country.

Mohammed also said that measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 by the ministry were yielding result as it had, so far, produced video and radio jingles to educate Nigerians on measure to forestall the spread of COVID-19

He stated that the jingle centred on general information on COVID-19, such as the use of face masks, burial protocol, testimonials by COVID-19 survivors and mass gathering.

He said that all the jingles in English had been translated and produced in Pidgin, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba languages, stressing that the Ministry had also developed 25 TV jingles and 25 Radio jingles.

He said that the jingles produced by the ministry were currently running on 10 television channels, adding that the jingles are also running on 40 radio stations across the country.

He noted that states like Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja had more than one radio station airing the jingles.

“In addition, we also have support from 40 community and campus radio stations across the country awaiting our jingles.

“Our aggressive and sustained campaign on the Social Media has gained traction, in the last five days alone some of the videos we posted have been viewed over one million times,” he said.

(NAN)

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