The Oyo State Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Dr Wasiu Olatubosun has expressed concern over the attitude of people to protect themselves from the virus.
Olatubosun expressed that despite the unrelenting campaign to sensitize the people on safety regulations against the Covid-19 pandemic, many still went about without fear of contracting the virus.
Olatubosun stated this while narrating his experience during his self-isolation period at his office on Wednesday afternoon, explaining that the State’s COVID-19 Task Force went to over 600 communities in the State to sensitize people about the dangers of the virus and how to avoid contacting it.
He said the task force afterward carried out community testing, which indicated that most people in the rural communities did not heed the warnings and have been infected already, as the results from communities showed.
“You would not believe that while I was on self-isolation at home, some people still came to my house on Sallah day to celebrate with me, they did not fear at all, I had to send an emissary to them on phone with gifts and asked them to go home, it was that bad.
“We preached the dangers of COVID-19 at all nooks and crannies of the State, we toured 600 rural communities as the holy prophets did, but our people did not heed the warning in time, which led to the outburst of the disease in rural areas at a point, but thank God the curve has slowed and we now have insignificant numbers coming from the rural areas.”
Dr Olatubosun asserted that the State government has cultivated what he called risk communication approach to fight people’s disregard to the danger inherent in getting infected with Coronavirus.
He said the approach would communicate the major consequences of not following COVID-19 safety protocols with the use of visuals, voices and graphics to showcase testimonial cases of people that earlier showed apathy and later contracted the disease.
When asked how he survived the virus and psychological effects of the 56 days self-isolation, the Commissioner explained that he was asymptomatic of the virus and endured six tests before being certified to be negative.
He said that although the world has not come out with a vaccine against the virus, the standard World Health Organization (WHO)’s medical recommendation for treatment was abiding, but for him, supplementing the orthodox medicine with local herbs helped him a lot to recover.
“I took 25 bottles of black seed oil, a bowl of the black seed, a lot of alligator pepper and bitter-cola as well as different brands of herbal concoctions which I drank at the interval and used for steaming after my normal drugs, but the utmost is prayer to overcome the trauma.”
Olatubosun praised Governor Seyi Makinde as a worthy war commander that never abandoned his soldiers no matter their conditions, adding that the governor would call him in the morning and in the evening every day to know his condition throughout his self-isolation days.
He said the efforts of the State helped mitigate the spread of the pandemic and infection as the State had 95% recovery rate.
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