Lagos State Government has discharged 87 additional patients from its isolation centres, bringing to 825 the total number of successfully treated persons in the state.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said 47 of the discharged patients were males and 40 females, adding that they are all Nigerians.
He said: “Twenty-six of the patients were discharged from the Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, 24 from Onikan Isolation Centre, 12 from Eti-Osa (Landmark), 11 from Agidingbi, nine from Gbagada Isolation Centre and five from Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Isolation Centre.
“With this, the number of patients successfully managed and discharged from our isolation facilities is now 825.”
The state government also predicted a drastic decline in the number of COVID-19 cases in the state by November.
It has also concluded arrangements with the 57 flagship Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) across the state to embark on monitoring of patients with asymptomatic, mild and moderate cases of the virus who it hoped to confine to homecare soon.
At a press briefing to commemorate Sanwo-Olu’s one year in office, the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said: “It is difficult to predict when the pandemic will end in Nigeria because this depends on a lot of factors. But in the next four to six months (between September and November), we will see a sharp decline in number of cases in the country and this will signal that we are coming towards defeating the outbreak.
“We are watching what is happening across the world and using the pattern of the outbreak in different environments to try and reach some kind of modelling pattern. This will tell us when it will peak, and then when it will finally end.”
He reiterated that by the end of July, Lagos was likely to reach between 90, 000 to 120, 000 cases of COVID-19, adding that these figures do not signify a peak period for the state.
“Because of this projection, we are ramping up our testing capacity. We are currently doing 2,000 testing every day, and this represents the highest in the country.
“Of the 90,000 projected cases, don’t forget about 95 per cent of the persons will be asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. Only five per cent will require serious or intensive attention. It is this small percentage we are worried about, and it is the ones we will like to manage in our isolation centres because we hope to give them close medical monitoring,” he stated.
He said for those asymptomatic or with mild to moderate symptoms, the state would confine them in their homes, adding that “we will use the PHC platform to deliver COVID-19 response to this category of cases. We have been revitalising our primary healthcare structure, and we are in the process of cascading management of the disease at primary healthcare levels. We are going to do that through our 57 flagship facilities.”