Baba Tela, Bauchi State Deputy Governor said about 7 medical health personnel consisting of 5 doctors and 2 nurses have tested positive for coronavirus in Azare, the headquarters of Katagum LGA of the state.
The Deputy Governor stated this wile briefing journalists in
Bauchi on Saturday.He said a journalist with the correspondent Chapel of the statehas also tested positive for the dreaded virus.
“I want to extend to you the message of his Excellency theExecutive Governor of Bauchi who asked me to tell you that any journalist whowants to be tested could submit themselves to the State’s taskforce to get hissample collected for medical examination”, Baba Tela said.
Baba Tela also debunked rumours making the rounds that about300 people have died of covid-19 in Azare as alleged by an ex-lawmaker whowrote a letter to the Presidency hinting about ‘fatalities.’
“I’m sure he has notcounted the deaths and he has not gone to the grave yard or had a conversationwith people who buried the deaths, so how could someone come up with figuresjust like that”, he insisted.
In a letter written to President Buhari by Hon. Ibrahim Baba,a former law maker representing Katagum who was deposed of his position by anAppeal Court in Jos, the former lawmaker alleged that there was “massiveoutbreak of coronavirus in Azare town and environs in Bauchi State, which hasalready resulted in over 100 fatalities in the last one week.”
The Former law maker attributed the mysterious death toCOVID-19, saying the incident has “thrown the entire area into great mourning,panic and confusion.
Ibrahim in the letter indicated that the “centrality andproximity of Azare to Bauchi, Kano and some major cities of Jigawa State makethe town’s large population susceptible to the virus due to the alreadyexisting large cases of the disease in those areas.”
But the deputy governor denied the figures, saying they werehighly exaggerated.
Baba Tela also said the ailment that killed the people inAzare town were yet to be established by health workers in the state; “but weare liaising with the WHO and UNICEF to retrain our health care workers inAzare to boost their capacity to respond to the situation on ground”, he added.
