Lagos State Government has commenced a house to house case identification to detect possible cases of COVID-19 in the State.
Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, who disclosed this during a joint Ministerial Press briefing on COVID-19 intervention held today in Alausa, Ikeja, stated that the Coronavirus case identification campaign tagged the ‘Community Active Case Search’ commenced on Monday 6th April, 2020 and is expected to run for two weeks in the first instance across the State.
He explained that health workers during this time will move from house to house, including health facilities, in pairs to administer electronic questionnaires on citizens, adding that the questions to be administered border on COVID-19 symptoms.
Abayomi stressed that the officials carrying out the exercise can be identified with the COVID-19 Outbreak Response tags and letter from the Local Government.
According to him, “In the coming days, some of our health workers will be moving around in pairs to administer an electronic questionnaire at homes and healthcare facilities to make inquiries about symptoms of cough, cold and fever”.
“This is in a bid to intensify our search for possible cases of COVID-19 in different communities across the State. I implore you to give them your maximum support by providing accurate information that would help in containing this pandemic quickly”, he added.
Answering questions on the number of patients discharged so far, the Commissioner disclosed that seven more patients have fully recovered having tested negative twice consecutively and have been discharged today to join the society.
He averred that the patients discharged included one female and six males, stressing that three of the discharged male patients are foreign nationals; two from Ukraine and one Italian. This according to him brings to 39 the total number of discharged patients in Lagos.
He said “Today, we have discharged seven more persons to join the society having fully recovered and tested negative twice consecutively to COVID-19. This brings to 39 the number of discharged patients in Lagos. The patients include one female and six males; three of the discharged male patients are foreign nationals, two Ukrainian and one Italian”.
While noting that the COVID-19 outbreak in Lagos State is seemingly under control, Abayomi noted that the State has had 100 percent recovery on case management. He added that the three COVID-19 related deaths recorded in Lagos are not from the State’s isolation facilities.
The Commissioner also disclosed that Lagos has 280-bed isolation capacity with 100-bed occupancy, leaving it with an excess of 180 isolation beds, maintaining that more isolation facilities under construction and rehabilitation will be opened for use for the management of cases in the event of a spike.
Giving assurance that the State remains committed to deploying necessary strategies to win the battle against the virus, Abayomi implored residents to continue supporting the government by complying with directives and measures put in place to curtail the spread of the diseases in Lagos State.
