The Federal Government has said corpses of patients who test positive for COVID-19 will not be released to their families for burial.
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, made this known at a NAN forum in Abuja on Friday.
According to the minister, such bodies would be handled by the Health Ministry because they are contagious.
The Minister said: “Coronavirus is very dangerous and contagious; there is no medicine for it yet and it is not just capable of killing, overwhelming healthcare system, it will destroy the economy.
“In some countries, they are putting dead bodies in big refrigerators, because the morgues have filled up. Nigerians should not forget that these are not the type of corpses that can be claimed for burial because it must be handled by the ministry of health.”
Mohammed added that the government will meet with indigenous manufacturers to discuss and facilitate the local production of Personal Protective Equipment to fight the spread of the virus.
He noted that the Minister of State for Health, Olorunnibe Mamora, and the Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investments, Adeniyi Adebayo, would meet with the manufacturers on behalf of the government.
Mohammed said that the move had become necessary in view of the shortage of equipment and the need to encourage and develop local manufacturing of medical equipment.
He said, “PPE is in short supply globally and we want to see how we can start manufacturing them locally.
“All over the world, people are making mask locally because there is a short supply of masks.
“Those ones we got from Jack Ma have been shared with the states.
“We call them starter packs and they contain masks and test kits. We have given them to states according to their needs.
“Naturally, Lagos got more because it is the epicenter of the virus.
“We are trying to source the PPE more locally, but one thing about PPE is that if you don’t get it right, you may lose more lives.”
