Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General of NCDC, gave the warning while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Thursday.

According to him, “I think there will be a gradual, carefully calibrated reopening of the economy. I don’t anticipate where everything will be opened at once, schools, markets and  airports will reopen on the same day,’’ he said.

“I don’t have all the answers but what I am encouraging everyone is to think about how they will run their lives differently in order to stay safe while returning to life.

“And I really encourage every small business, every community to be thinking about this because at some point, President Muhammadu Buhari will have to reopen the country slowly”.

“They should be thinking of how do I run my business differently, how do I run my restaurant differently, how do I organise my school and teaching differently in the  context of COVID-19.

“And at the same time, we have to keep trying to prevent transmission, so we have to find a middle path between a locked down country and the one that is able to respond to the big public health challenge that we have facing us.’’

Ihekweazu noted that every business right now should be prepared as people’s behaviours in shops, schools and some of the social distancing that have been introduced must continue;.

“There is no prescription around it because businesses are different, schools, markets, supermarkets, roads, our societies are different.

“For example, If I were to be running a restaurant that I will normally have a capacity of 100, I will now plan on how can I run that with 50 not 100, so I can keep people sufficiently apart.

“If I have a school with perhaps 1,000 pupils, I will be thinking and planning, perhaps, a quarter goes to the playground at a time, another quarter has a different break time and so on; that is the kind of thinking.’’

“So, what I am encouraging every Nigerian is to start thinking about the post-lockdown era and how they will arrange their lives differently”.