The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has said that one major problem confronting it is the availability of bed spaces for COVID-19 cases in Lagos State.
NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chike Ihekweazu made this known on Thursday at the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 press briefing.
He said, “Lagos is the only place where we are struggling with bed spaces for now. We will always tells Nigerians the truth. We are struggling with bed spaces in Lagos for now.”
Recall that Lagos State currently has five operational isolation centres at the Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba; the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH; the General Hospital, Gbagada; Lekki and at Onikan Stadium. However, the Cardiac and Renal Hospital has been converted to an isolation centre by the state government.
Ihekweazu added that the NCDC is however drawing up new approaches to make testing more effective in the country.
He added, “We are in the process of scaling up testing across the country and the key component that has changed in this is that in Lagos, Abuja and Kano, instead of waiting for people to call us, we are now going to where the patients are, so we have set up specific testing locations and of course in collaboration and under the leadership of the state in these three states to increase the samples collected from cases that actually do meet the case definition.”
