Posted on: Mon 29-06-2020

The health facility is an initiative of the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID), a private sector initiative, established to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at the unveiling, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, said the launch of the newly built isolation centre would help in boosting the capacity of Nigeria’s healthcare system towards containing the spread of COVID-19 in Lagos state.

Emefiele said efforts to contain the spread of the virus has had unprecedented impact on the global economy and indeed Nigeria’s, adding that global growth is expected to contract by over 4.9 per cent in 2020 down from a positive growth of 2.9 per cent in 2019.

He said the Nigerian economy was exposed to a twin shock of public high crisis and revenue shock driven primarily by 55 per cent drop in crude oil prices between January and May 2020.

“This un-parallel shock must require that all state governments along with the organised private sector must work together to address these challenges in order to preserve lives and restore economic activities in our country. We have implemented several initiatives to cushion the effects of the pandemic which include the N50 billion intervention facility for house-hold and SMEs that were adversely affected by the pandemic, N100 billion facility for the health and pharmaceutical sector and a N1 trillion facility for the agricultural and manufacturing firms of the economy.

Our inability to accurately predict the extent to which the virus could spread and how long it will last requires that we build a sufficient capacity within our healthcare system to prevent the spread of the virus and preserve the lives of vulnerable Nigerians and this requires that all parties come together in order to deal with this great challenge”.

He thereafter commended the private sector-led coalition group for supporting the government by providing donations worth N29 billion, adding that the donations are being used to build well equipped isolation centres across the federation.

“So far CACOVID alliance has provided about 32 isolation centres across 32 states, we anticipate that by the end of July, 39 other centres would have been established across the federation”, the CBN Governor revealed.

Also speaking, the Governor, Lagos state, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said, the launch of the isolation centre speaks to the can-do spirit of Nigerians as well as our private sector.

Source: Thesun

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