Lagos State Commissioner for health, Akin Abayomi, has said most cases in the state are not severe as they are not in need of ventilators.
He made this known at a briefing on March 31, stating that;
Most of our patients are experiencing a very mild to moderate degree of illness. Infact, we don’t have anybody that is requiring ventilation at the moment which is a symptom of what you would describe as severe disease.
Giving a further breakdown of the cases in Lagos, the Health Commissioner noted that of the 81 cases in Lagos, 66 came about as a result of transmission within Lagos.
Abayomi explained that;
We have 15 cases that came off a vessel that was maneuvering off the coast of Lagos, doing some oil and gas work. The ship had a positive case, we airlifted the positive case off the ship and we went back to test the 51-crew officials.
He revealed that of the 51-crew officials tested, they initially found seven positive, which were removed from the ship and taken to the isolation Centre in Yaba.
The commissioner added that;
The company has isolated the remaining 44. Of those 44, another eight tested positive. So we had a total of 15 from that vessel off the coast. So, that does not represent transmission within Lagos. We’re removing 15 from the 81, otherwise it would give us a false impression of what’s going on.
According to him, of the 66, none of them is experiencing any severe symptoms, as only about 33 percent are mild, while the other 33 have moderate symptoms such as severe fever, weakness, coughing, headache and body pains.
He, however, said that the symptom is not extending to affect the organs such that they have lung or kidney failure.
The commissioner stressed that aggressive contact tracing is still ongoing to curb any further spread of the disease.
Lagos State and the FCT, however, still hold the highest number of cases with 82 and 28 infections respectively.
