The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, during the Presidential Task Force briefing on Thursday, announced that with the shortage of bed spaces in isolation centres in the country, school hostels and hotels would be required as isolation centres.
Ehanire further explained that there were four categories of patients ranging from those on quarantine with mild or zero symptoms to those that would need to be in an intensive care unit. According to him, there are over 112 treatment and isolation centres in 35 states and the FCT. But however, not all states have up to at least 300 beds designated for isolation treatment.
“We have sadly recorded 254 deaths, most of them are persons associated with other ailments, confirming the general observation that risks are higher for those with illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes and non-communicable diseases.
“We need to continue increasing bed capacity to match the probable number of patients so that we do not experience horrific scenes of bed space shortages seen in some European hospitals.
“In event of overflow, we can require hotels and school dormitories to be prepared for level 1 which is quarantine, and level 2 is isolation of COVID-19 positive with zero or mild symptoms, to free hospital beds to be dedicated to level 3 which is moderate to severe cases and level 4 which is for the high dependency and the intensive care unit.
“I, therefore, call on activists and philanthropists to work with state governments to scale up non-pharmaceutical measures and beef up infrastructural assets for isolation and treatment in their states”, he said.
Last month, the Federal Government had considered the option of home-care treatment for COVID-19 patients as some states were already out of bed space when the number of confirmed cases in the country was 1,728. The Minister of Health had appealed to individuals and group of persons who own properties, especially hotels, to make them available for use in cases of an emergency.
As at Thursday evening, the total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country stands at 8,733. Lagos state has the highest number of cases, with 4,012.
