Television Nigerian

South Africa’s Telkom, Samsung and the government have teamed up to develop a track and trace database to identify the whereabouts of people who may have contracted coronavirus.

The virus has infected 1,505 people in the country and killed seven.

Telkom has been working with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to develop the database, which uses data from a person’s phone to track where they have been.

The mobile network operator said the system collated multiple data sources such as GIS, or geographic information system mapping, to track an infected person and identify those they may have exposed to the virus.

“This reduces the current reliance on the patient’s own recollections of who they may have exposed unknowingly and enables the CSIR to contact people who were in the same proximity as the patient.”

The Department of Health will still use officials to trace primary contacts and ensure testing for secondary contacts in certain communities, it added.

Telkom has partnered with Samsung to distribute 1,500 handsets to people hired to track and trace people in the provinces hardest hit by the virus. The phones will be connected for free using Telkom’s FreeMe packages for the next 6 months.

In a media briefing late on Thursday, the Minister of Communications Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said the government respected everyone’s right to privacy and the database would not be used to spy on citizens.

Other countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Russia and Germany have launched, or plan to launch similar apps.

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…Demand N52.9bn social package

…Say don’t allow our case be like Italy, New York, others

…Urge Buhari to make wearing of mast mandatory

At least 9.6 million older persons in the country have pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari to provide N52.9 billion as a special security package for them as a palliative for the coronavirus pandemic.

The persons operating under the umbrella of Coalition of Society for the Rights of Older Persons in Nigeria, COSROPIN, urged the administration to deploy the services of the Councillors, town hall union executive and community leaders to ensure the funds get to them.

Addressing a press conference Friday in Abuja, the President of COSROPIN, Senator, Dr. Eze Ajoku, further urged the government to rely on the statistic by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, which puts Nigerians that are from 60 years and above at 9.6 million persons.

Senator Ajoku added that, “With 774 Local Government Areas and 8,809 wards as per last INEC statistics, it will appear there is an average of 1,091 older persons in each ward, which we suspect many of them are in metropolitan cities and like me can fend for themselves or are pension and gratuity.

“We therefore assume that each ward may still on the average have up to 300 older persons that need support in our rural areas. If that statistics is accepted, the government monthly will need to be specifically budget N13.2 billion to provide social protection of N5, 000 to each older person in Nigeria.”

He said that, “but going by the current pay out of N20, 000 for two months, government needs tp provide N52.9 billion.”

Senator Ajoku charged the government to urgently put in place adequate measures that would guarantee their protection from the ravenous coronavirus, COVOD-19 pandemic; they said devouring mostly people in their age bracket across the world.

He lamented that they are under perennial fears over concerns raised by rumours from Italy and New York, which suggested that the older persons have become the least priority in the plan to save lives.

According to him, older persons were not carriers of this virus but often get infected by younger people whose higher immunity can help them to survive whereas the older persons, because of underlying old health issues, have low immunity.

Senator Ajoku, was supported by other executive members of the coalition including, a former Assistant Inspector General of Police, AIGP, S.A Aiyewumi, Vice President of the coalition, Alhaji Aliyu Abdullahi, former military Administrator of Kogi state, Colonel Paul Omeruo, rted, and Mrs. Victoria Onu among others.

Presenting the text of the briefing entitled, “The role of government in prioritising older persons in the COVID-19 social intervention and economic palliative”, also, called on President Buhari to make wearing of masks by all Nigerian mandatory.

According to him, “Making the wearing of mask by Nigerians mandatory will go a long way in helping to reduce the spread of the virus.

“In the Nigerian situation, there are places that the mandatory social distancing will be difficult to maintain especially in our density populated urban slums with overcrowded households.

“Also, there are many parts of the country where there are no running tap water making the regular washing of hand with soap difficult. What is then the option for prevention?

“That is why COSROPIN believes that the wearing of mask by all Nigerians will help to reduce person to person transmission. With a mask, small and large drooping from infected people are minimized on surfaces or direct contact with people.

“The mask will protect me from you and protect you from me. With the mask, the tendency to touch the mouth and the nose regularly is also reduced.

“We therefore, call on Mr. President to make wearing of mask by all Nigerians everywhere mandatory. The government should provide quality masks or people should be encouraged to and taught how to make their own masks, how to wear them and make them clean.”

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says it has traced 6,700 contacts in Nigeria over the novel Coronavirus (COVI9-19) pandemic outbreak in the country.

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General of NCDC, made the disclosure at the Presidential Taskforce briefing on COVID-19 in the country, on Friday in Abuja.

“Nigeria has been tracing a total of 6,700 contacts in all; 71 per cent of them have been followed up as of yesterday,” he said.

Ihekweazu noted that people were “graduate’ out of contact-tracing after 14 days, if they showed no symptoms of the virus.

The NCDC DG said that all the focus of the agency for this week had been to improve the levels of contact tracing, by taking advantage of the lockdown.

“In Lagos state, the lockdown has been especially helpful for our contact tracing,” he noted.

Ihekweazu debunked that NCDC would never deploy anything without validating its use.

“The Jack Ma Test kits are being evaluated at the moment, once we are sure the results are the same quality as what we have been seeing from existing tests, we will deploy them,” he explained.

He said that President Muhammadu Buhari had tasked the PTF not to look east or west but to find solution to the COVID-19 problem in the country.

“There is a lot of work happening in the background to increase testing capacity but we need Nigerians to be patient,” he emphasised.

Ihekweazu said the updated case definition took into account, the epidemiology of the virus and the transmission pattern seen in the country.

He said the agency would continue to review guidelines such as the case definition, as more precise information emerged on the COVID-19 outbreak including characteristics of transmission and geographical spread.

“The major update to the current case definition is that any patient with acute respiratory illness within the last 10 days (fever and either cough, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath); and in absence of an alternative diagnosis that explains the clinical presentation.

“Those residing or working in the last 14 days in an area identified by NCDC as a moderate or high prevalence region will be treated as a suspect case.

“This is in addition to the already existing case definition where the focus was on symptomatic patients (fever and either cough, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath) who are recent international travelers within 14 days of arrival or contacts of confirmed cases,” he explained.

He noted that NCDC would continue to increase its capacity to test for the virus