Anambra State governor, Chief Willie Obiano has raised the alarm that the state recorded a total of 110 new cases of Covid-19 between December 7, 2020 and January 11, 2021.
Obiano gave the figure in a special broadcast to the people of Anambra on Tuesday on the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the governor, giving the rise in the incidences of Covid-19 in the state, schools shall not re-open on January 18, 2021 as earlier scheduled.
He said ‘rather, schools shall re-open after two weeks from today (Tuesday) to enable the principals and teachers prepare for the return of our children’.
He urged school managers to revive all the Covid-19 structures and practices that helped to protect children during the first wave of the pandemic.
Obiano called on the churches and other religious organizations to set up action teams and return to the practices that helped in the first phase of the pandemic.
The governor said the threat posed by the second wave of the pandemic, is not only real but even more deadly.
“It is more deadly because after struggling with the pandemic for nine months, we have dropped our level of vigilance and returned to our normal lives. But the virus has not gone away. On the contrary, it has come back with renewed viciousness.
“This second wave of Covid-19 did not take us by surprise. We have been monitoring global trends on the pandemic and we saw it coming. We anticipated that the second wave would hit us hard because of our well-known culture of mass return during the Christmas and New Year season. So, we made efforts to prepare our people to mitigate the impending challenge. We held wide consultations and town-hall meetings with the Igwes, the religious leaders, civil society organizations, leaders of market task force, transport operators and leaders of various community groups and associations. During these meetings, we emphasized the need to revive all the structures that helped us survive the first wave of the pandemic.
“Sadly, it appears that our warnings fell on deaf ears. Our people allowed themselves to be carried away by the joy of the yuletide and failed to maintain the Covid-19 protocol. Today, we are faced with a clear and present danger.
We must do everything within our power to halt the spread. That is why we have improved our testing capacity and brought the total number of tests done to 13, 412 tests so far”, the governor stated.
He warned that nobody will be allowed into any government premises without properly wearing a face mask, adding that the ban on nightclub activities is still firmly in place.
“The Covid-19 action teams in all our 61 markets must ensure full compliance with the standard Covid-19 protocol. They must set up a hand-washing point at the entrance to each market, take the temperature of visitors to the markets and ensure that both traders and their customers are wearing their facemasks properly”, Obiano submitted.
The governor said all markets in the state are given one week to set up the necessary safety measures and ensure proper compliance, warning that any market found violating the standard will be shut down.
