Joseph Bakare
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said that the Federal Government has decided not to release the corpses of people who died after testing positive to coronavirus to relatives for burial.
Mohammed stressed that such corpses would only be handled by the ministry of health because they were contagious.
The minister made the declaration at a forum organised by the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja to give an update on the activities of the presidential task force on COVID-19.
“Coronavirus is very dangerous and contagious; there is no medicine for it yet and it is not just capable of killing, overwhelming health-care system, it will destroy the economy. In some countries, they are putting dead bodies in big refrigerators because the morgues are filled up. Nigerians should not forget that these are not the type of corpses that can be claimed for burial because it must be handled by the ministry of health,” he said.
He called for the cooperation of citizens and asked them to “stay safe, obey simple instructions of basic hygiene and social distancing,” adding, “In a few weeks, we will resume our normal life”.
So far, Nigeria has 190 cases of COVID-19. Of that figure, 20 persons have recovered and have been discharged from hospital.