Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Monday raised the alarm over rising COVID-19 death in Lagos, saying the virus has killed an average of six persons daily in the last one week.
He also admitted that the third wave of the virus is right now in Lagos, saying that proactive measures must be put in place to nip the crisis in the bud.
Speaking at a news conference at the State House, Alausa, the governor said from the beginning of July the state started to experience an increase in the number of daily confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Lagos State, with the positivity rate going from 1.1% at the end of June 2021 to 7% at the end of July 2021.
“As at the 1st of August 2021, the positivity rate in Lagos is 8.9%. This is an 8-fold increase over the recorded figure a month ago, and it should rightly alarm all of us. This has resulted in 4,300 confirmed cases in July alone and 352 admissions into our isolation facilities.
“But let me make it clear that this necessary sense of alarm should not be responded to with panic, but instead with a firm 2 resolve and determination to reverse the trend. We have done it before and we can do it again. We dealt with the first and second waves and did our best to prevent a third wave,” Sanwo-Olu stated.
The governor said now that the third wave of the virus has come, the state must dig deep into what “we have learnt from the previous waves, as well as summon the will to do everything necessary to bring down the numbers, on the way to eventually defeating the virus once and for all. Epidemiology Update From the beginning of the outbreak in February 2020 to date, Lagos State has recorded a total of 64,032 confirmed cases of COVID-19.”
“Of this number, 56,336 have recovered in community, 2,755 are currently being managed actively in community. Over the course of managing the COVID-19 pandemic, about 5,029 patients have been admitted into our various COVID-19 care centres in Lagos. We have, sadly, recorded 390 fatalities in Lagos State, 30 of which have taken place in this current 3rd wave of the pandemic.
“Essentially, we have recorded on average 6 deaths per day since last week. 3 Home-Based Care Given the huge population of our State and the rising numbers of confirmed cases during the first and second waves of the pandemic, it became necessary for us to deploy tele-medicine in managing positive patients. In this vein, we launched a home-based program, driven by our EKOTELEMED call center service,” Sanwo-Olu added.
