The Cross River State Ministry of Health has intensified its campaign for vaccine acceptance sequel to the outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 virus across the globe.
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The Commissioner for Health and Chairman of the COVID-19 Response Task Force, Dr. Betta Edu disclosed this to members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, in Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, south-south Nigeria.
Dr. Edu, who noted that healthcare delivery services were challenging on a global scale due to the mutating COVID virus, said principal officers in the sector joined other health workers in increasing sensitization for testing and vaccines acceptance.
“Healthcare all over the world right now is very challenging because the last time the world witness a pandemic of this nature was about a century ago. The world was not expecting another pandemic, much so this kind of virus that keeps mutating,” she stated.
Fulcrum of response
The Commissioner argued that although the government and the ministry were working hard to eliminate the virus, information making rounds on social media was enhancing vaccine hesitancy.
She suggested that the media should collaborate more effective with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Ministry of Health and others to encourage more people to take the vaccines.
According to her, “At one point in our response Cross River achieved 117 percent vaccination against COVID-19.We exhausted our quota and requested for more from other states. We actually saw the curve flatten, but with this fourth wave and new variant, there is need for high level collaboration amongst all parties.
“The Federal, state and local governments, private institutions, development partners and most importantly the media must collaborate. People believe information from the media; the media is very key; in fact the media is the fulcrum of every response.
“Cross River has one of the best responses in Nigeria and I say that with certainty. We created our EOC – Emergency Operations Centre – even before Nigeria recorded its first case of COVID-19. We started the movement “No Mask, No Entry” especially in public spaces ahead of the World Health Organization, ahead of the Nigerian Government,” Edu said.
Increase testing in communities
The Commissioner said that although Cross River Government had replaced its COVID testing lab and isolation centre destroyed during 2020 ENDSARS protest, the ministry had rolled out its plan for increase testing every communities and solicited the support of all media organizations in the state to achieve success.
“We are sending out vaccines to people amidst high vaccine hesitancy, amidst all the myths and wrong perception on social media; Cross River is still able to vaccinate a good number of people in each phase of vaccination.
“We are faced with a lot of challenges, but each day we strive to surmount these issues. We now have four labs that can test for COVID. However, we need more people to come out for testing. So, we need media collaboration to get the information out there.
“Some people, who have taken the vaccines, have jettison caution. They no longer observe social distancing, regular use of nose mask, washing of hands or using hand sanitizers. We need our people to know that we are not out of the woods yet and they need to be very serious in observing the protocols,” she emphasized.
The Commissioner expressed appreciation to the media for the collaboration so far, adding “let us be fair in our reportage and encourage high compliance for testing and vaccine acceptance.”
