Chidi Samuel| Nigeria on Friday night confirmed 328 new coronavirus cases even as Lagos, the epicentre of the outbreak has warned it will run out of bed space in three weeks if the high rate of infections in the state continues.
The Nigeria Centre For Disease Control in a Tweet on its verified twitter hande @NCDCgov said the new infections were recorded in Lagos 121, FCT 70, Bauchi 25, Rivers 18, Oyo 16, Kaduna 15, Gombe 14 and Edo 13.
Others are, Ogun 13, Jigawa 8, Enugu 6, Kano 5, with Osun and Ondo recording 2 cases each.
According to the health agency, Nigeria currently has 11,844 cases of the novel coronavirus with 3696 discharges and 333 deaths.
The tweet read, ”328 new cases of #COVID19;
Lagos-121
FCT-70
Bauchi-25
Rivers-18
Oyo-16
Kaduna-15
Gombe-14
Edo-13
Ogun-13
Jigawa-8
Enugu-6
Kano-5
Osun-2
Ondo-2
11844 cases of #COVID19Nigeria.”
Discharged: 3696
Deaths: 333
-Lagos will run out of bed spaces in 3 weeks if we keep recording high cases, say health commissioner
Lagos state commissioner for health, Akin Abayomi on Friday warned that the state will run out of bed spaces at isolation centres if the state continues to ratch up high number of COVID-19 cases.
Abayomi, who made the disclosure a press briefing in Ikeja attributed the recent spike in the number of positive COVID-19 cases to increased testing capacity.
He said, “We’ve been testing more. We’ve been escalating our capacity to test for COVID-19 and what we’ve found is that the more we test, the more we find, which is a reflection of the fact that COVID-19 is spreading within the community and we’re finding more cases than we can manage eventually when we project.”
“If we carry on with the rate of positive testing that we are obtaining, we’re going to run out of isolation beds in our established isolation facilities.
“Therefore, we are projecting. If we keep getting 150, 200 positives everyday, in another two or three weeks, even though we’re opening new isolation centres all the time, in time, we’re going to run out of beds.
“And this has happened all over the world; it’s not just in Lagos or Nigeria. Every other country has reached the same tipping point where you now have to transition from managing patients in an isolation centre to managing patients who are not that unwell at home, and reserving the isolation centres for people who are feeling unwell and need to be monitored more closely by medical personnel.”
The commissioner further revealed that Lagos is currently developing strategies for managing asymptomatic patients at home to accomodate the expected rise in number of new infections.
Lagos, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, has a total of 5,663 cases.
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