COVID-19 Cases: Lagos Has Not Reached Its Peak Yet – Abayomi

The Lagos State government has asked residents to continue to comply with the measures put in place to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases in the state.

Despite the increasing figures of COVID-19 cases reported recently, the Commissioner for Health in Lagos, Professor Akin Abayomi, believes the state has yet to reach its peak.

While giving an update on the outbreak of the disease, Professor Abayomi disclosed that the government had projected to see figures near 200 at this time.

“We know the outbreak is expanding, so we expect to see more cases,” he told reporters at a press conference on Thursday.

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The commissioner added, “We have not reached our peak yet, but the graph and the rate of new cases are very gentle and that is what we defined by our module and it is following through to the trend that we defined in our module to see this kind of increase.”

This comes hours after Lagos – the epicentre of COVID-19 outbreak – reported 199 new cases of coronavirus.

In a late-night tweet on Wednesday, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said the figure in Lagos was among the 284 new infections recorded in 12 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

It noted that the state now has a total of 2,954 COVID-19 cases, out of which 582 patients have been discharged with 40 deaths.

In his reaction, Professor Abayomi stated that the government was not surprised that the number of new cases was increasing.

According to him, Lagos is witnessing a gradual and not dramatic rise in the number of cases, compared to the situation in other places.

“We knew we were going to see about 200 (cases) by this time and maybe by next week, we might be seeing 250 or 300 per day.

“When you will say something is dramatic is if it goes from 50 to 200, to 1,000; that will be dramatic and that’s what was seen in the northern hemisphere – in Europe and America,” the commissioner said.

He added, “Ours is gradual; we’ve gone from 50 to 70 to 100 to 130 to 150 and now for the first time, we are seeing numbers approaching 200 per day.”

Professor Abayomi noted that one of the factors responsible for the increased figure of new cases was the improved testing capacity of the state.

He said, “We now have four laboratories that are testing and they have the capacity to test 24 hours a day on different shifts. So, our total testing capacity has gone up to 800 tests a day.”