The Lagos state government has said that Lagos state has no mortality from the coronavirus infection so far.
Of the 81 cases confirmed in Lagos state, 8 have been discharged while 73 are still active and undergoing treatment.
The Lagos state commissioner for health, Professor Abayomi stated this while fielding questions from journalists during the Lagos state COVID-19 update on Tuesday afternoon.
“In Lagos, nobody has died. We have discharged 8 and there is nobody in the ward that is looking like they are going to die. We don’t have severe disease among the patients we have. All of them are mild to moderate.
“We have discharged 8 who are fully recovered, and we are going to be discharging some more as their tests return negative. We have to make sure they have two consecutive negative results”, he said.
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Abayomi noted Lagos state has sufficient medical practitioners to handle the situation, and they have also received support from retirees and volunteers who have been trained and coopted to work with the active practitioners.
He urged Lagosians to practice social distancing in order to complement the efforts of the government in tackling the spread of the disease.
“We are confident in our strategy. If we do see a surge, it is not going to be as it was in Spain or Italy because we have had an early start and we have been aggressive and offensive in our approach.”
He affirmed that all cases discharged thus far are fully recovered and will not experience a relapse.
Facilities
Professor Abayomi said that the state is well equipped with professionals and facilities. Three laboratories are operating in Lagos and the state has sufficient testing capacity to keep pace.
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He noted that the state is yet to receive any portion from the medical supplies donated by a Chinese billionaire, Jack Ma, but this has not impeded the work.
“We still have excess testing capacity. We are not under stress in terms of access to testing capacity and we know in due course that we will get our portion from Abuja. We are ahead of the outbreak and with every day that passes we increase the capacity,” he insisted.
He announced that 50 professionals will complete their training on Wednesday and deployed to the isolation center in Onikan.
No cause for alarm
The commissioner revealed that most of the patients in Lagos are only experiencing mild to moderate degrees of the illness, and there has not been any need for a ventilator so far.
According to him, 50 % of the active cases are exhibiting mild symptoms while 50% are exhibiting moderate symptoms such as severe fever, coughing, headaches or body pains.
“It is not extending to affect the organs such that we have lung failure or kidney failure so we haven’t seen any of that yet,” he stated.
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Cases so far
The commissioner explained that 15 out of the 81 cases in Lagos came from a vessel doing explorations on the coast of Lagos and that the remaining 66 came from transmissions within Lagos
According to him, the ship had a positive case of Covid-19 who was airlifted. Out of the 51 crew members, 7 initially tested positive and were moved to the infectious disease hospital in yaba while the remaining 44 were kept in isolation. Over the weekend, another 8 came out positive.
He noted that the government was aggressive in contact tracing, after which they are monitored for a window period of 14 days.
“We are still contact tracing a lot of them, and we are just about getting to the end of the 14 day period where a lot of people from the imported cases will come off the monitoring list”, assured.
