The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has revealed it is currently “struggling” for bed spaces for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in Lagos state which is the epicentre of coronavirus in Nigeria.
There are 992 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Lagos alone and 199 of these patients have been discharged after recovering from the disease.
Director-General of NCDC Chikwe Ihekweazu, while addressing the presidential task force on COVID-19 on Thursday, said efforts are being made to change strategy in order not to allow the inadequate bed spaces affect the fight against coronavirus.
“Lagos is the only place where we are struggling with bed spaces for now. We will always tells Nigerians the truth. We are struggling with bed spaces in Lagos for now,” he said.
The isolation centers in Lagos are at the Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and at Onikan Stadium.
He continued, “We are in the process of scaling up testing across the country and the key component that has changed in this is that in Lagos, Abuja and Kano, instead of waiting for people to call us, we are now going to where the patients are, so we have setup specific testing locations and of course in collaboration and under the leadership of the state in these three states to increase the samples collected from cases that actually do meet the case definition,” he said.
“So, we are going into the communities, health centres to identify those with these case definition and bring them in. We are doing this because we are certain that we have ongoing community transmission especially in these three cities. We have to adapt our response to this situation. We adapted to the circumstances in every state, every city where the nature of transmission changes.
Dr Ihekweazu called on Nigerians to support the efforts aimed at tackling community spread of the disease, adding that individuals should avoid stigmatizing workers and patients.
As of Thursday, Nigeria had recorded 1,932 cases of coronavirus.
