COVID-19: We received over 31,000 fake calls – Lagos govt

The Lagos State government has appealed to residents to stop making hoax calls to its Coronavirus (COVID-19) lines, revealing that about 31,040 calls sent to  on dedicated lines to alert on coronavirus had been fake calls, saying these  calls constituted 80 per cent of the total calls made on the line.

According to the state Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, these fake calls are blocking the state government from attending to those who really need help, as they were unable to reach government through the lines,.

Abayomi revealed that of the 87 active cases under the state government care, only two patients required oxygen with none needing ventilation.

He further revealed that if not for proactive efforts of the state government, which made it to put a strategy that included case identification, isolation, contact tracing and community ownership, the positive cases in Lagos would have gone up to 40,000.

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“This is why residents must own the process by taking necessary precautionary measures, practice social distancing, wash their hands with soap, report suspected cases among others,” he said,

“That’s the reason residents must stay at home and practise social distancing,” he added.

Speaking further, the commissioner disclosed that persons between the ages of 30 and 59 dominated the positive cases that the state  has, saying this was a deviation from the statistics from other climes where the elderly recorded more positive cases. 

He attributed the occurrence to the fact that the those in the age bracket are people who are more mobile and who travel by air most.  

According to him, in the coming days, the state government hopes to shift attention to Alimosho Local Government, as its statistics shows the community is endangered because of the density and the new positive cases from the local government in the last one week. 

He revealed that the temporary 100-bed isolation centre built at Onikan was now ready for use and would be inaugurated on Tuesday. 

This was just as he affirmed that though the state treatment of its coronavirus patients had been effective, there was yet no drugs for cure for the virus, adding that the state government was setting up clinical trials from next weeks on its patients and staff.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE