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Good evening! Welcome to TNG’s daily updates Covid-19 developments in Nigeria and across the globe. Emman Ovuakporie, Regional Editor, TNG.
It’s a sad one for Nigeria as the lockdown directive given by President Muhamnadu Buhari claims its first victim in Nigeria’s oil rich city Warri in the heart of Delta State.
This act has been widely condemned by Nigerians who described it as barbaric and demand the immediate withdrawal of soldiers from Nigerian roads.
Lockdown: Filipino president orders police to shoot violators
Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Asian country warned people who choose to ignore the coronavirus lockdown measures that they could be shot, finishing by saying, ‘I will bury you’.
Following reports of disturbances in the Philippine city of Manila, president Rodrigo Duterte made it clear to everybody that they would disobey the orders set out in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus at their peril.
“Instead of causing trouble, I will bury you”
With a fragile health service under pressure, home quarantines have been placed upon the nation, but there have been some of the poorest citizens protesting over the lack of food aid being provided by the government. There were also instances where healthcare workers were being physically abused.
Speaking late on Wednesday evening in a televised address, Duterte did not mince his words.
“It is getting worse. So once again I’m telling you the seriousness of the problem and that you must listen.
“My orders to the police and the military… if there’s any trouble and on an occasion they fight back and your lives are in danger, then shoot them dead.”
“Is that understood? Dead. Instead of causing trouble, I will bury you.”
Worldwide cases near 1 million
The number of infections from the coronavirus is edging closer to one million with Johns Hopkins University currently estimating that there are now 937,170 cases around the world. The death toll is also close to the 50,000 mark with the current number on 47,235.
British government faces testing crisis
UK ministers are facing a torrent of criticism about the country’s low rate of testing for coronavirus in the wake of the revelation that only 2,000 NHS staff have been tested out of more than 500,000. After the UK’s record daily increase in the number of deaths, there is mounting concern and anger that the government followed a flawed strategy based more on mathematical modelling than established public health practice. Here is what the UK papers think of the testing mess. As well as facing the threat of contacting Covid-19, medical staff also face the dilemma of choosing which patients to keep on ventilators as the machines remain in short supply.
US running out of protective equipment
Donald Trump has admitted that the US is running down its stockpile of protective personal equipment as the nation faces a rapid rise in the number of virus cases. The US president urged states to “make a deal” with manufacturers to obtain the much-needed equipment as US cases rose well past 200,000. One of the experts on Trump’s virus taskforce, Anthony Fauci, has reportedly been given extra security after it emerged that he had received some threats from people critical of his views sometimes seen as contradicting the president’s pronouncements
Director of WHO ‘deeply concerned’
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he was “deeply concerned about the rapid escalation and global spread of infection”. “Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near exponential growth in the number of new cases, reaching almost every country,” he said.
Hope for stricken cruise ships
Trump also said that Florida must allow two virus-stricken cruise ships to dock in the state to get passengers to safety. Four people have died.