The Federal Government said on Friday that it was contemplating targeted lockdown in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and other major cities in the country as the number of COVID-19 cases soars in the West African nation.

Although recoveries from the disease in the country have crossed 100,000, the government said it was worried that with more than 127,000 infections, many citizens were not adhering to the safety protocols. 

“Certainly, even if we are going to have a lockdown, it is not going to be a total lockdown. A couple of weeks back, we analysed the data and we identified the hotspot local government areas,” the National Incident Manager of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Dr Mukhtar Muhammad, said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily. 

According to him, “Mostly, the areas affected are the urban local governments in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna, Plateau States. "Even in most other states, it is the urban areas that are involved. So, if we are going to have any restrictions, it will be in these areas.

“The urban areas are the most affected and that is why we have these superspreaders and that is where we are going to target. We have analysed that and we are advising the states based on the data that these are the focused areas where these transmissions are more than the others.”

Earlier, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire had said on Thursday that the country had secured additional 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as the fight to tame the disease gathered momentum.

This was even as the date of the vaccine’s delivery into the country remained unknown as vaccine manufacturers struggle to meet global demand in time.

“We do not have an exact date,” Ehanire said on Channels Television’s Politics Today. “The date it comes out depends on when the manufacturers are able to deliver, and that is not something that any country can enforce at this time.”