The Ekiti State Government would on June 1, inaugurate the COVID-19 Molecular Laboratory established to boost the testing capacity of the state.

The government disclosed that a sum of N2 million had been realised from the court fines imposed on over 100 lockdown offenders arrested since the beginning of the lockdown procedure.

The members of the State COVID-19 Committee spoke in Ado Ekiti yesterday while giving an update on the status of the pandemic in Ekiti.

Speaking during the press briefing, the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Mojisola Yaya-Kolade, said the laboratory located at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital would be inaugurated by Governor Kayode Fayemi.

“We are still perfecting some regulatory procedure with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control , but everything will be fine-tuned before Monday.

“We have had 20 COVID-19 cases so far, two are still active, we have recorded two deaths and 16 have been treated with investigational drugs and discharged,” she said.

The commissioner disabused the minds of the people that cases of COVID-19 had become a financial gain to a state, clarifying that “it Is a financial drain to any state, not a benefit”.

The Director General, Office of Transformation, Strategy and Delivery, Prof. Bolaji Aluko, said security was still tight at the border towns and that the state had not recorded serious incursion through the borders in recent time.

Aluko stated that the fact that all the quarantine centres in all the 16 local government areas were currently empty, corroborated the fact that the borders were well secured.

The Commissioner for Environment, Hon. Gbenga Agbeyo, said the government had undertaken the fumigation of all major towns across the three Senatorial districts in the state to ward off COVID-19 spread. “To ensure that we have a healthy environment, the government has declared that all Ekiti residents must observe the monthly environmental programme of Saturday, May 30 to make our state clean”.

Also speaking, the Senior Special Assistant on Public Health, Dr. Jimlas Ogunsakin, added that sensitisation on the danger of COVID-19 is still being intensified across the 133 towns in the state to contain its spread.

Ogunsakin said the disease has not reached the level of community transmission due to the right strategies put in place by the state government via the COVID-19 task force.