The Lagos State Ministry of Health just notified the attendees and participants of the Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards (AMVCA) of their exposure to someone infected with the coronavirus.
The event, which took place on March 14 at the Eko Hotel, hosted hundreds of celebrities. Also, it had staff from the hotel who also came in contact with the infected person.
This alert comes 10 whole days after the award show. During this time, infected AMVCA attendees would have had ample time to pass on the virus to hundreds of other people.
Following the event, many of the attendees either stayed at the hotel or went for after-parties; and have been subsequently roaming the streets of Lagos.
This is an act of gross irresponsibility seeing as the news of the infected attendee has been in the media for almost a week! It seems like Omashola had the right idea.
Nollywood actress Adesua Etomi posted on Twitter about the issue today. Etomi said that she and her husband, Banky W, attended the award show; and as such were self-isolating and encouraging others to do the same.
Check out her tweet below:
In addition to that, the Ministry of Health is still “town-crying” for returnees from COVID-19 hotspots to submit themselves to testing. Whereas in Ghana, returnees are tested immediately they arrive at the airport.
At this rate, the hopes of containing this pandemic are pathetic at best. Maybe Gifty Powers was right to call Ghana the new giant of Africa.