The Lagos State Government has disclosed that the implementation of a complete lockdown of the state might not be far from reality if the case of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to increase.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who declared curfew in the state, during a situation update briefing at the statehouse on Friday, said Lagos accounts for 44 of the 70 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria.
He added that going by the developments unfolding, the state was gradually moving towards having 70 confirmed cases of the virus.
“We are moving in the direction of a total lockdown but there are numbers or indices that we need to see before we carry it out, which we have yet to see. We need to see a huge spike in the numbers of confirmed cases, so, we are looking at that,” Sanwo-Olu said.
Sanwo-Olu also said based on available data, out of the 44 confirmed cases in the state, Ikeja and Eti-Osa local government areas had the highest number of patients, adding that the government was focusing on those areas.
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However, the state Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, in an earlier press briefing, stated that the state might witness as many as 39,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in a worst-case scenario.
The commissioner employed Lagosians to practice social distancing and curb the spread of the disease.
“Our mathematical modelling shows that the worst-case scenario is that we may see up to 39,000 cases in Lagos, but if everyone practices good social distancing, the figure will be limited to 13,000.
“If we add social distancing to active contact tracing, then we will be able to bend the curve further. The figures may seem alarming at this point, but this is just to emphasise to the Lagos community to follow the instructions of the incident commander to make sure that we practice social distancing.
“Looking at the same timeframe from the introduction of the index case, you can see that Lagos State is not seen anywhere near what Spain, Italy, and Iran are showing. So, at weeks two and three of our index case, we are flat and at week four, we have 37 cases; while at the same fourth week, Italy, Iran, and Spain had more than 20,000 cases,” Abayomi said.
Meanwhile, Abayomi also disclosed that the Lagos State Government was tracing 3,000 contacts, who might have had contact with some of the confirmed cases.
