Coronavirus: PTF tells NYSC to start planning resumption

The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has advised the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to start planning the resumption of its full activities.

The NYSC had shut down orientation camps nationwide and halted the deployment of corp members in March as part of Nigeria's measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease.

The Federal Government has since May started easing many of the restrictions put in place to combat the highly infectious disease.

The national coordinator of the PTF, Sani Aliyu, announced during a media briefing on Thursday, August 6, that NYSC has been told to start planning ahead of resumption in future phases of Nigeria's response.

"We will work closely with them to design policies that may allow this to happen in the future," he said.

Sani Aliyu says non-compliance to safety measures is still a big problem [NAN] Pulse Nigeria

The resumption will very likely not happen till at least September as the PTF also announced on Thursday that it was extending the second phase of eased lockdown for another four weeks. The phase had previously been extended two times in the past.

The PTF lamented that one of the most significant reasons for the extensions is the failure of Nigerians to adhere to safety measures put in place to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Non-pharmaceutical measures such as regular hand-washing, social distancing, and wearing face masks in public are regularly disregarded by many Nigerians, according to the PTF.

Aliyu said, "The assessment that we did has revealed that there's a lot of non-compliance with our non-pharmaceutical interventions, a lot of disbelief, skepticism, negativity with regards to the COVID pandemic.

"It is very clear that we need to have additional interventions to improve compliance with our non-pharmaceutical measures and our protocols."

Nigeria has recorded 45,244 coronavirus cases, and 930 coronavirus-related deaths as of August 6.