We are struggling with bed spaces in Lagos, NCDC says

The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) says it is currently
struggling with lack of bed spaces for the treatment of COVID-19
patients in Lagos state.

Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of NCDC, made this revelation at
the briefing of the presidential task force on COVID-19 on Thursday,
April 30. Ihekweazu added that although there are about 3,500 bed spaces
available across the country, this is insufficient and it leaves the
infectious disease control agency to struggle.

He said: “In response to the question about bed spaces. There is not
doubt about that, we are struggling in certain places especially in
Lagos. To an extent Kano and Abuja too but the biggest challenge right
now is in Lagos where bad spaces are really tight.

“Across the country, we have about 3500 bed spaces identified as
available for COVID-19 but in Lagos we are really struggling. So, we are
going to keep trying to work with them to make more spaces available.”

He added: “Lagos is the only place where we are struggling with bed
spaces for now. We will always tell Nigerians the truth. We are
struggling with bed spaces in Lagos for now.”

There are 947 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Lagos alone and 187 of
these patients have been discharged after recovering from the disease.

The isolation centers in Lagos are at the Infectious Disease
Hospital, Yaba, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and at Onikan
Stadium.

Speaking at the briefing, Ihekweazu said efforts are being made to
change strategy in order not to allow the inadequate bed spaces to
affect the fight against coronavirus.

Ihekweazu also said the agency has adopted a new measure to make testing more effective, appealing to Nigerians for support.

He said: “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.

“So, we are going into the communities, health centers to identify
those with these case definition and bring them in. We are doing this
because we are certain that we have ongoing community transmission,
especially in these three cities. We have to adapt our response to this
situation. We adapted to the circumstances in every state, every city
where the nature of transmission changes.

“These changes mean that more and more people will be going into the
community. We really need Nigerians to support the work that they do and
not stigmatize them. Currently, we are living with COVID-19, but not
the way we thought about it during the HIV era. This is about
communities. How can we as a country manage this as we transit into the
next weeks? As we release the guidelines for implementing the
non-pharmaceutical intervention that will be released very soon, we are
doing this in the context of rising cases.”