By Jonathan Okpanachi
Dr Edward Amali, director of Livestock Services at the Benue State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS), says Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic which broke out worldwide in 2019 with some cases recorded in Benue State before its containment, is coming up again.
Dr Amali, who specialises in fumigation, told journalists during an interview in his office that COVID-19 was not eliminated completely. It remains in the bodies of affected persons, hence the upsurge, he said.
He said some countries had already started experiencing the recurrence, urging Benue people and Nigerians at large to continue to observe preventive measures.
Such measures include fumigation of surroundings and all other precautionary habits as well as other practices embraced in 2019 when the pandemic broke out and overlapped to 2021, he said.
According to him, “In as much as we are not praying for the thing to come up in full as it did before, we want to step up prevention activities so that it doesn’t even come up in our state at all.
“With the last COVID experience, we stand in a position to say yes, our preventive measures in the past were effective. We are believing that now, hearing this news, we will be putting those apparatuses together, and begin to enlighten people about prevention measures.
“You remember at that time, there was a committee set up by His Excellency then and this committee was broken down to subcommittees. In our ministry here, we were particularly in charge of fumigation. So, in the fumigation, for example, we did a lot of work in all the local governments of this state; going to hospitals, clinics, personal and public properties and fumigating them.”
