Some state government have expressed their disagreement with home treatment of Coronavirus patients as an option, preferring to continue treating the infected patients at isolation centres.
This comes amid the rising cases of the virus detected in various states in the country, meaning inadequate bedspaces will become a challenge.
However, PUNCH reports that States have maintained that getting persons who had tested positive for the virus to the isolation centres remained one of their strategies to contain the spread of the deadly virus.
In Kwara State, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq and spokesperson for the state COVID-19 Technical committee, Rafiu Ajakaye, said the state government was not thinking of treating patients at home as it had sufficient bed spaces in its isolation centres.
He said apart from the 600-bed space at the Muslim Pilgrim Camp, another isolation centre had been established at the state General Hospital in Offa.
Also in Ondo State, the Commissioner for Health, Dr Wahab Adegbenro, said the state had enough facilities to accommodate all its confirmed cases.
He told PUNCH, “We already have a 300-bed capacity isolation centre, but we currently have 22 cases. One is dead and 15 have been discharged while we have six left in the isolation centre. So, treatment of patients at home is out of it and we are not praying for that to happen.”
In Borno State, the Commissioner for Information, Mallam Babakura Abba-Jatto, said it was not considering home treatment for COVID-19 patients so as not to take chances with the health of the people of the state, according to PUNCH.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, called on state governments to intensify efforts at surveillance and contact tracing, saying the nation’s testing capacity was currently being underutilised.
The minister said, “While our daily testing capacity is presently at 2,500, unfortunately, we are presently able to test less than 1,500.”
