Coronavirus: Lagos govt inaugurates incident command system

Lagos State government, on Monday, launched an Incident Command System (ICS) in a bid to prevent an outbreak of the fast-spreading Novel Coronavirus.

According to the state government, the health emergency structure is being set up to help with containment in the unlikely event of outbreaks of the virus in the state.

Commissioner of Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen.

He explained that the Novel Coronavirus is a new pathogen to the human race for which research is still ongoing on how to arrest it.

The commissioner affirmed that no suspected or confirmed cases of Novel Coronavirus had been found in Lagos, warning residents against rumour-mongering on public health and safety.

The state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, while launching the Incident Command System, said the measure was not to stigmatise citizens of any country but a precautionary one taken in the interest of the people.

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The Command System will have Governor Sanwo-Olu as the Incident Commander while the Commissioner for Health will serve as the Deputy Incident Commander.

The governor noted that relevant health professionals, in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Health, would be deployed to the Lagos International Airport for a higher level of monitoring, assuring that the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will continue to escalate communication and create public awareness.

“What we have started to do is to have what we call a heightened state concern on the Coronavirus. We are not declaring an emergency in any form but creating a heightened state concern.

“Also, the honourable commissioner through his ministry will identify relevant health professionals that would, in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Health, be deployed to our International Airports in Lagos where we would see higher level of monitoring as well as organised level of incidence reporting layout,” the governor said.

Sanwo-Olu said that although the team expects people to be self quarantined, he, however, stressed that the state would carry out a supervised quarantine where details about immigrants would be taken at the point of entry while the team would do daily follow-ups through phone calls to identified individuals for a period of two weeks.

According to him, the command will be in operation for the period of time the risk lasts, assuring that adequate preparation had been carried out to tackle the virus.

“This command will go on until when we believe and we have been given assurance that we have a stable and controlled environment but in the meantime, these exercises are going to be put in place and we are going to start things immediately.

“I also want to mention that we have started providing both human and material logistics required for this exercise.

“All of our major General Hospitals are also being prepared in event of an outpour into any of them. The hospitals in mainland have tents coming up and extensive resources are being put in that particular health facility for them to be on standby in case of any suspected or identified case,” Sanwo-Olu said.

Speaking further, Abayomi said WHO had declared the novel coronavirus a global health concern, contending that this would make the state government step up scrutinising travellers coming in from the affected region.

“We need to really ramp up the human capacity at the airport to be able to scrutinise all travellers coming in from particularly the routes that are coming in from the South-East Asian regions,” the commissioner said.

The deputy governor, Dr Obafemi Hamzat; the Consul General of People’s Republic of China, Chu Moaming and the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Folashade Jaji were among the dignitaries present at the event.