The federal government has urged those who took away medicines and vaccines stored in its warehouses across the country to return them to avoid harmful effects.

The Minister of State for Health, Senator Olorinmibe Mamora, who spoke at a media briefing by the Presidential Taskforce on control of COVID-19 on Thursday in Abuja, said that some of these vaccines could still be useful if they are returned immediately without damage.

Mamora said: "I want to use this opportunity to appeal to our youths to stop crushing our medical supply stores. Most of these drugs are kept under controlled temperature and humidity conditions. Destruction of these conditions will render them ineffective and in some cases poisonous."

He said that Nigeria Centre for Disease Control's (NCDC) medical warehouse in Idu Industrial Estate in the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) is stocked with medical and laboratory equipment, adding that destruction of items will impart negatively to the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mamora, who said that the consistent drop in new COVID-19 infections is encouraging state governments to shut down isolation centres, however appealed to them not to be in a hurry to do so that the country will not be caught unawares in the event a second wave of the disease.

He said that the country's current fatality rate is less than 1.8 per cent, which is less than 2.4 per cent fatality rate in African and 2.8 per cent globally.

The most important thing we should do now is how to protect ourselves, instead of putting ourselves in danger.