Governor Duoye Diri has ordered a total lockdown in Bayelsa after the state recorded a case of the Coronavirus.
Diri who also heads the COVID-19 State Task Force had adopted several measures including partial border closures, curfew, enforcing of social distancing policy and demolition of Swali markets to prevent the lethal infection getting into the state, but the measures appear not to have stopped the virus from entering the state.
The index case who is a 47-year-old woman with a history of hypertension and diabetes, presented herself at the Bayelsa Specialist hospital in Yenagoa with a history of poor appetite, fever, headache, cough, chest pain for almost a week.
Though she denied travelling outside the state, she is in a stable condition and has been evacuated to the Isolation center at the Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital Okolobiri.
Consequently the Bayelsa Specialist Hospital has been shut down and all medical personnel and staff that attended to her have been quarantined with their samples taken for tests.
Governor Diri who declared a total lockdown in the state starting from midnight on Monday, April 27, said only essential workers, pharmaceuticals and foodstuff sellers, are exempted from the restriction of movement.