The Presidency has broken its silence after news of some Presidential aides testing positive to COVID-19 saying they are now on self isolation in their respective abode.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, who stated this when he appeared on Sunday Politics on Channels Television, said such incidents only confirmed that the presidential aides are human and not immune to happenings around them.
Premium Times, an online newspaper had on Saturday reported that some presidential aides had tested positive to Coronavirus.
It also mentioned the names of some cabinet members including the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
However, the minister dismissed the report that he tested positive to COVID-19 describing the report as fake news.
Mohammed, therefore, demanded a retraction and an apology from the online newspaper which first published the report that he contracted COVID-19 virus and is receiving treatment in isolation.
Also commenting on the issue, Malam Garba Shehu, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, confirmed to newsmen he has been afflicted by the mild variant of the COVID-19.
Also Adesina said: “Well, what I like to say is that presidential aides are just human. They can fall sick. If anything happens to human beings it can also happen to presidential aides.
”The fact that we are presidential aides does not make us to be immune to certain things. If there is a virus that is ravaging society. Well, it can touch anybody.
”So Malam Garba Shehu has confirmed that, yes, he tested positive but he said it’s mild. And I believe that by now, because it’s happened since Wednesday, by now, he should almost have beaten it if he had not beat it already. There is no cause for alarm.”
Commenting on his contact with Shehu recently, the media aide said: “Well, I also believe God for the best. If it happens, I’ll recover. So that’s it.”
Asked how many of the President’s aides in the State House have been infected, Adesina said:
“No. That will not be within my purview to discuss maybe if you get the Presidential doctor or anybody in the medical side, they will tell you,
” I wouldn’t know because, it is a private thing. If it happens to anybody is between that person and possibly the doctor. It’s not going to be general knowledge.
”So I may not be able to say.”
(NAN)
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