THE Chairman, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Ministerial Experts Advisory Committee on COVID-19, Dr. Ejike Oji has said high population of youth in Nigeria is responsible for low confirmed cases of the deadly coronavirus disease in the country.
Addressing journalists at a Media Roundtable on the 6th Nigeria Family Planning Conference 2020 at the weekend, Oji said, “the COVID 19 pandemic is not so terrible in Nigeria due to the low level of aged people, just about 3.5 percent.”
He added that “the young (with great immunity) that are over 80 percent of the population are going around with it, without any trouble.”
Oji warned that cases of the pandemic could spike in the country because people fail to observe protocols set by health authorities for containing the disease.
According to him, there were only three people at the Abuja isolation centre, located in Gwagwalada, few weeks ago, but the number had tripled at the time of the media briefing.
With the cold-inducing harmattan season, Nigeria has been recording increasing number of positive cases of the pandemic since the EndSARS protest ended abruptly in October this year.
The Federal Government, through the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 had warned of spike in cases of the disease after the protest; and daily report of confirmed cases of the virus by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has been maintaining upward swing since after the protest.
145 new cases of the virus were reported by the NCDC on Tuesday December 1, 2020.
Nigeria’s confirmed cases of the disease, according to NCDC is 67,557; active and discharged cases are 3,102 and 63,282 respectively; while 1173 fatalities have been recorded.
Lagos state leads the number of laboratory confirmed cases with 23,287 and 220 deaths, while Kogi, which has vehemently denied any case of the virus, is least with five cases and two deaths.
As at December 1, 2020, 63, 245, 164 cases of the virus had been reported globally with 1, 469, 469 deaths, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
The US is leading the chart with 13.6 million cases and over 268,000 deaths.