Lagos State
Government on Monday said the state does not need the help of foreign doctors,
including Chinese to help in fighting the dreaded Coronavirus pandemic.
Nigeria’s Federal
Government is planning to solicit the help of Chinese doctors to fight raging
Coronavirus in the country, but many people are kicking against the idea.
Lagos, currently has
120 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, with 31 discharged, two evacuated, two dead
and 87 active cases.
The state, however,
said what it needed right now were Molecular biologists and logisticians from
anywhere, whether abroad or China.
Lagos Commissioner
for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, at a news conference to give update on
Coronavirus situation in Lagos, said there was nothing wrong soliciting the
help of China to help curb Coronavirus in Nigeria.
“It is not a Nigeria
COVID-19 outbreak but a global pandemic, there is need for all nations to
collaborate, experts from China went to Europe to assist Italy and Spain, these
are well developed countries.
“We are running
short of molecular biologists, we will not mind receiving assistance from any
country that can give us human resource capacity. Experience molecular
biologists is trained not less than 4 years.
“I am not aware that
we are inviting any doctors from abroad to come and assist us, we are only
interested in scientists and molecular biologists and logisticians because 70
percent of response to COVID-19 is logistics,” he said.
Abayomi appealed to
Lagos residents to stop making hoax calls to the coronavirus lines, revealing
that about 31,040 calls, to report suspected and real cases on the dedicated
lines to alert on coronavirus had been fake calls.
He stated that these
fake calls were 80 per cent of the total calls made on the line, lamenting that
these fake calls were blocking the state government from attending to those who
really needed help, as they were unable to reach government through the lines.
According to him,
only nine per cent of the total calls (3,610), were valid.
Abayomi revealed
that of the 87 active cases under its care, only two patients required oxygen
with none needing ventilation.
He also said if not
for proactive efforts from the state government, which made it to put up
strategy that included case identification, isolation, contact tracing and
community ownership, the positive cases in Lagos would have gone up to 40,000.
According to him,
This was why residents must own the process by taking necessary precautionary
measures, practice social distancing, wash their hands with soap, report
suspected cases, among others.
Abayomi added that
if the state should experience 5,000 cases in two weeks, it did not have the
capacity to handle it, which was why residents must stay at home and practice
social distancing.
He disclosed that
persons between the ages of 30 and 59 dominated the positive cases Lagos had, a
deviation from the statistics from other climes where the elderly recorded more
positive cases.
Abayomi said in the
coming days, the state government hoped to shift attention to Alimosho Local
Government, as its statistics showed the community was endangered because of
the density and the new positive cases from the local government in the last
one week.
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