Lagos starts house-to-house campaign to identify possible coronavirus cases

Lagos State Government has begun a house-to-house case campaign to identify possible cases of the COVID-19 disease.

According to Commissioner for Health Akin Abayomi, the campaign dubbed ‘Community Active Case Search’ started on Monday April 6, 2020 and is expected to run for two weeks.

“This is in a bid to intensify our search for possible cases of COVID-19 in different communities across the State. I implore you to give them your maximum support by providing accurate information that would help in containing this pandemic quickly,” he said on Friday.

He explained that health workers will move in pairs to administer electronic questionnaires for citizens to determine whether they have COVID-19 symptoms.

Abayomi said that the officials carrying out the exercise will be identified with the COVID-19 Outbreak Response tags and a letter from the Local Government.

“They will administer an electronic questionnaire at homes and healthcare facilities to make inquiries about symptoms of cough, cold and fever”.

The Commissioner further disclosed that seven more patients have fully recovered having tested negative twice consecutively and have been discharged from hospitals where they were being monitored.

They are one female and six males including foreign nationals; two from Ukraine and one Italian.

“This brings to 39 the number of discharged patients in Lagos,” he said.

The Commissioner also noted that Lagos has a 280-bed isolation capacity with 100-bed occupancy, leaving it with an excess of 180 isolation beds.

According to him, more isolation facilities are under construction and will be opened for the management of coronavirus cases in the event of a spike.

Abayomi implored residents to continue supporting the government by complying with directives and measures put in place to curtail the spread of the disease.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of some 200 million people, registered its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in late February.

Reuters reports that it has had a total of 276 confirmed cases and six deaths.

The country has imposed a number of measures to stop the spread of the virus, including the closure of its borders and the imposition of lockdowns in the capital Abuja, the commercial hub of Lagos and the neighbouring Ogun state.