One thousand volunteers have been engaged to commence a door to door Health surveillance and testing for COVID-19 across villages in Cross River State, south-south Nigeria.

Dr. Betta Edu, the Commissioner for Health gave the hint on Sunday at the weekly press briefing on the activities of the state COVID-19 Response Task force in Calabar, the capital city.

Edu, who is the chairman of the Cross River State COVID-19 Response Task force, said that the volunteers are expected to collect samples from suspected cases for testing.

She said “what we are trying to do is to ensure that the disease is locked out because once you have one case the next thing is a continuous rollout. That is the reason you see the governor go to the border to sit down all night and pays security men to keep the border closed”.

The chairman, who noted that Cross River State was bounded by neighbours like Akwa Ibom, Benue, Ebonyi and Cameroon Republic currently battling the outbreak of the Coronavirus, said “we are right now at the middle of the action”.

“It will be fool hardy for us to fold our hands and allow the disease over power is. We are in dire need of ventilators, isolation and testing centres. It is really not easy collecting samples from Cross River an send the sample to Irua in another state for test” Edu stated.

She explained that the one thousand volunteers would be divided into smaller units, equipped and deployed to villages to collect samples from people.

According to her, “the earlier we begin the better for Cross River State. It would not be cost effective to take those samples to Irua because we are going to be collecting many”.

She urged philanthropic individuals and organizations to donate ventilators, PPEs as well as isolation centres to the government of Cross River State.