The Commissioner for Health, Lagos State, Akin Abayomi, has, on Thursday, said that the state is in the process of adopting home isolation and treatment for positive COVID-19 patients in the state.
Prof Abayomi said that the state is hoping to make home isolation and care an official option for some patients, especially those with mild symptoms of the infection.
The Commissioner, while explaining the reason for this move, said it is due to an increase in the number of people avoiding isolation centres and practising self-treatment at various places.
The Commissioner stated:
There are people who are already practising self/home-isolation on their own, because we can’t find them, the numbers they give us, maybe they are false or they don’t answer their phones. When you go out to pick them at their residences, they have absconded their residences. So, they are isolating themselves in different places.
In effect, the concept of home-isolation is being practised by many Nigerians, even though it is not yet a state or national practice.
The people of Lagos are practising home isolation which is one of the reasons that we as the government are trying to transition to home care because it is happening anyway, we might as well regularise it and make it an official option.
According to Prof Abayomi, the state’s isolation and treatment centres are about 60 to 70 per cent filled.
Meanwhile, Lagos has a total number of 569 bed-capacity across eight isolation and treatment centres, causing the commissioner to raised an alarm on low occupancy as a result of people avoiding being admitted at isolation centres.
In the meantime, the state remains the epicentre of the pandemic in Nigeria, having recorded 199 new cases on Wednesday, which increased the total confirmed cases to 2,970 and 2,282 active cases.
The total confirmed cases of coronavirus in Nigeria stands at 6,677 as of Wednesday, with 1,840 discharged cases and 200 deaths.