Covid-19: Lagos Shuts Down Three Isolation Centres
Lagos State Government has shut down three COVID-19 isolation centres in the state, with effect from Friday, July 31.
The State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who announced this on Saturday during his 17th COVID-19 update on the management of the pandemic in the state.
He identified the isolation centre in Eti-Osa Local Government Area as one of the three centres closed down.
Others are the isolation centres in Lekki and Agidingbi, Ikeja.
Sanwo-Olu, however, explained that the patients have been relocated to a large capacity centre – Indo-Centre in Anthony area of the state, which would be soon be inaugurated.
He said, “Over the last four, five months, we have built excess capacity centres, but that is only the way to go, you cannot over prepare.
“We have got to a stage where we need to balance the economics of this and which of these facilities do we need to keep running.
“Some of them now are having less than 20 per cent of occupancy. This is why we reach a conclusion to shut Eti-Osa facility and another one in Lekki.”
He explained that the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) in Yaba “is now also gradually being reverted back to its former status as a hospital to cater to all forms of infectious diseases’’.
He added that the Ca-COVID dedicated tent on the IDH grounds would, however, remain strictly for COVID-19 cases.
Sanwo-Olu said that in June, the government further expanded COVID-19 testing capacity in Lagos with the accreditation of seven private laboratories.
According to him, the government successfully tested close to 9,000 samples in Lagos State, across the public and private laboratories in the week ended July 26.
He added that it showed a 50 per cent increase from the approximately 6,000 samples tested in each of the preceding two weeks.
The governor said that the increase in testing would lead to an increase in the number of daily confirmed cases of the virus in the state.
“This is a welcome development, since the government’s capacity to contain the pandemic depends significantly on how successful it is in identifying all the existing cases.
“I must, however, also mention that we have seen a general decrease in positivity rates in Lagos State over the past two weeks, which, combined with the increase in testing numbers, paints a very encouraging picture of the outcome of our response strategy.
“We will continue to fine-tune our efforts and strategies to build on our successes and close any existing gaps.
“It has now been five months since the first case of coronavirus was recorded in Nigeria.
“Since then, Nigeria has seen more than 43,000 infections and significant disruption of social, religious, educational and economic life, like every other part of the world.
“As at July 31, Lagos state has had a total of 15,150 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 10,835 persons who have recovered and discharged.
“We have sadly lost 194 persons to the virus.
“This leaves us with 1,813 active cases in community and 96 under management across various isolation centres in the state,’’ the governor said.
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