Abayomi: Lagos now conducts 200 to 300 coronavirus tests daily

Akin Abayomi, Lagos commissioner of health, says the state now conducts 200 to 300 coronavirus tests in a day.

A study carried out by TheCable in March showed that Nigeria was not testing enough people, making it impossible to ascertain the real number of people that might have contracted the disease.

Data obtained from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as of March 24 showed that between 10 and 20 persons on the average were being tested in the country daily.

Abayomi, who spoke on Friday during the briefing on the management of COVID-19, said lately, the demography of the disease has been changing.

“We have 68 percent imported cases and 32 percent as a result of local transmission. So that means the demography of the infection is changing. We are no longer have imported cases because of the limitations of movement and we are seeing more transmission within the community,” he said.

“When we are looking at nationality, 91 percent of our cases are Nigerians and nine percent are foreign nationals.

“At the moment, we are still operating from the infectious disease hospital in Yaba and we still have adequate bed spaces. We have reached about 70 percent capacity at the Yaba hospital.

“Access to personal protection equipment, we have adequate stock. Our testing has been increased.

“We are now testing at three sites independently; that is the infectious disease hospital, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research and we are testing between 200 and 300 tests a day.”

He said the state is ramping up its capacity across board and looking forward to opening the Gbagada and Onikan tent isolation centres next week which will give the state about 300 bed spaces.

“We are looking to open the Gbagada Isolation Hospital next week and we are also looking to commission the Onikan, tent at the Onikan Stadium next week.

“So that will bring into commission, two more isolation facilities which will give us isolation bed spaces of about 300. After that, there are other projects that will be commissioned and we are looking at a total of six isolation facilities in the next month.”

He said training is being conducted on a weekly basis for doctors, nurses, hygienists and ward attendants who will be needed to man the additional facilities.

He noted that the impact of social distancing, contact tracing and isolation of positive cases all seem to be slowing down the disease and that Nigeria is achieving some degree of bending the coronavirus curve.

He said Nigeria is averaging between six, ten and 15 cases daily and that contact tracing of about 2, 450 people is ongoing.