Governor Simon Lalong with top police officers in Plateau state
By M. Peter, Jos.
As COVID-19 cases in Plateau state rise to 17, Governor Simon Lalong has urged citizens of the state not to panic, but to continue to strictly adhere to regulations put in place to contain spread of the virus.
Governor Lalong while responding to the rise in the number of cases said the development calls for concerted efforts to achieve effective contact – tracing and stop community spread which is now the major challenge.
He frowned at people who still doubt that existence of the disease saying such people should have a rethink because he just lost two of his friends to the disease.
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“If we had not taken the steps we adopted, the situation will have been more worrisome. This is the time to concentrate on contact tracing to be able to ascertain the magnitude of the pandemic on our people. The best thing is to check and address it instead of sitting and arguing. Already, the index case has been treated ad discharged while the others are doing well.”
“We are now going into aggressive enforcement of the regulations we rolled out as that is the best way for us to contain the rising cases.”
“From all the cases we have, there is none that originated within the State. All of them are from people who sneaked into the State from our borders despite the closure. We will not allow this to continue especially at this time that we are doing contact tracing and working hard to curb community spread.
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“It is sad and unfair for people to take this position and try to instigate others to disregard our regulations. COVID-19 is real and for me, I lost two friends recently, one in Lagos and the other in Bauchi.”
Lalong also reminded the citizens of Plateau that lockdown of the state earlier relaxed resumes midnight of Sunday 10th May 2020, and violators will be arrested and prosecuted.
