Most COVID-19 patients in Lagos will survive – Commissioner

Most COVID-19 patients in Lagos will survive – Commissioner

Tuesday, March 31, 2020 9:07 pm


Prof. Akin Abayomi addressing journalists on Friday

Lagos State Government says it is expecting most of its COVID-19 patients to survive, as no mortality was recorded in their treatment.

Prof. Akin Abayomi, the State Commissioner for Health, made this known at the COVID-19 media briefing on Tuesday in Lagos, saying that COVID-19 mortality rate varies from country to country.

Abayomi said that mortality rate in China was 2.5 per cent, Italy about five per cent, while in some parts of Europe, five out of 100 patients might die of the virus.

“Our survival in Lagos is still 100 per cent. We do not have severe cases among the patients.

“Most of the patients are experiencing a mild to moderate degree of the illness, no patient requires ventilation at the moment,” the commissioner said.

Abayomi said the state has 81 cases with eight recoveries and no death, adding that 66 cases were due to transmission within Lagos and 15 cases were from an oil and gas vessel.

According to him, strategies deployed in Lagos is effective, saying that the state was seeing between six and 10 confirmed cases in a day.

“That is a very slow rate of increase compared to what we see in Europe and other countries where the increase is in hundreds and thousands,” he said.

The commissioner said that the state has three molecular laboratories for COVID-19 test, thus was not under testing pressure.

“Each of those facilities is testing up to 50 per day, so we have about 150 tests per day. We are increasing that capacity by the day, hopefully, we will be able to get to 200 and so on,” the commissioner said.

He said there was an ongoing training of medical personnel and volunteers, stressing that the various strategies, facilities and aggressive approaches would enable the state to contain the virus effectively.

The commissioner noted that the lockdown of the state was to minimise person to person transmission, adding that some people were secreting the virus, but were asymptomatic, thus posing a danger to the populace.

Abayomi stressed that if people continue to practice social distancing, the state would see a flattening of the virus curve, and invariably a slow down of the virus soon.


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