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By Olasunkanmi Akoni

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, on Sunday, said the state will be rolling out Register-to-Open initiative to help assess the level of readiness of identified sectors for supervised operations, as the state was considering full re-opening of critical sectors of its economy.

However, Governor Sanwo-Olu said the state was not in a hurry to totally lift the lockdown, but expressed satisfaction with the level of compliance to safety guidelines against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the state.

While explaining Register-to-Open, Governor Sanwo-Olu said: “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy.

“In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.

“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening.

“I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their workspaces need to look like.

“For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow (Monday) or any time; there has to be a process guiding the re-opening.

“We will be mandating LASEPA and safety commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead.

“I must, however, caution that this should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not. The state’s economy is not ready for that now.”

ALSO READ: Coronavirus: NAFDAC only approved Chloroquine as clinical trial, says DG

The governor disclosed that all the 10 staff of Government House, who tested positive to the virus, had fully recovered and returned to their beats.

Also, besides the Register-to-Open Lagos initiative, the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, said the state would commence the clinical trial treatment of COVID-19 this week using chloroquine as approved by National Agency for Food Drug, NAFDAC.

Omotoso said: “We are ready for the chloroquine clinical trial because we have just secured all the approvals. The documentation has also been completed. Those that will be used for the trials are ready too. By next week we should be ready for the trial.

“Also, Lagos got a supply of additional 20,000 testing kits, although we were expecting 40,000. It means that the testing will increase now.”

Vanguard