Ahead of this year’s Eid-el-Kabir celebrations, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, on Wednesday warned Muslim faithful not to travel if it is not necessary to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
Recall that the NCDC had last week confirmed a case of the dreaded SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in the country.
NCDC Head of Risk Communications Division, Dr Yahya Disu, gave the warning when he appeared on ‘Sunrise Daily’ a programme on Channels Television.
While giving this warning, Disu attributed the spread of the COVID-19 second wave pandemic in the country to the number of people who travelled for Christmas last December.
Disu said, “Before now, we knew the third wave was going to be inevitable. Third wave is about having an increase in the number of cases. We have had an increase and decrease in the number of cases before now. So, the third one is starting but what is important is what we are able to do to ensure that we are able to reduce it.
“More importantly, Sallah is coming when people just travel and that makes the risk higher in villages, in different parts of the country. So, we need to warn people: they don’t need to travel if it is not necessary, you can celebrate where you are. During Sallah, we go to the mosque in large numbers, but this is the time we need to be very cautious.
“We are working with religious organisations. The second wave in Nigeria started because of Christmas, because people travelled for Christmas. So, we can avoid it, we can learn from it. A life that we lost is very important for every one of us, it could be anybody. So, it is not worth it to lose a life because we want to celebrate Sallah or Christmas.”