The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has come out to explain why there is a low mortality rate in Nigeria compared to other nations.

PTF simply revealed that the death rate is not high because of the age bracket of most of those infected by the virus.

According to the chairman of the task force and Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, the virus is mostly affecting those between the age of 31 to 40 years, so they are still young enough to fight it off and recover swiftly.

He then added that we still have to be careful as citizens to preserve the life of the vulnerable 20 percent that might lose their lives while battling to survive.

His words, “We always meet with Mr. President to do a review of the national response to COVID-19.

“This is critical because it’s the 5th interim report that we submit a review, it also provides the opportunity to brief him on the progress made so far. Today is the last day of the second phase ease lockdown so we needed to update him on the successes, the consolidation that has taken place, and the challenges.

“He was quite responsive to the issues that we raised and the considerations that we put in place.

”We drew a comparison of what the infections were one month ago and what it is now. On the 28th of March, 2020, globally we had about 5.5 million infections, on the African continent we had 89,000 infections and in Nigeria on the 28th of May, we had eight thousand plus infections.

“Mortality rate, most countries see about five point something percent, while in Nigeria we are seeing a figure of two-point something percent. So we have been able to keep our mortality rate down.

“No lives lost can be ignored, it’s sad but we are trying to do the best we can in the circumstance in trying to balance lives and livelihood as we prepare for the next phase of the response.

“One of our major appeals is that right now we are at the advance stage of the community transmission and at that stage, there is hardly much that government can do, the best we can is to push the narrative that we have been saying over last three months, realizing and being conscious of the fact that there is no vaccine in sight, no drugs have gotten for the cure of Covid-19, the only thing that we will continue to preach to our people to adhere to is the non-pharmaceutical interventions we have pushed in the last three months.”

“Maintain physical distancing wearing of non-medical masks in public places, maintaining proper hygiene of washing of hands and sanitizing of hands. These are the only form or remedies available now.

“The precision lockdown like I have said, we have identified 18 local governments out of the 774 local government that is considered to be high burden with this infection and they account for 60 percent of 24, 077 infections.

“The reason for the precision lockdown is to place in those places specific measures that will be administered by state governments and local authorities. It is not for the federal government, it’s the responsibilities of State and local authorities.”