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| Residents wearing face masks watch a music band formed by Sri Lankan Army outside a housing complex during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against COVID-19 in Colombo on Monday. Photo: AFP |
The Lagos State Government on Monday said it is setting up its clinical trials for the treatment of coronavirus.
The Health Commissioner, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said the state is currently seeing more of “local transmission” of COVID-19 cases since the borders had been shut.
Abayomi, at a Press briefing on the update on the viral infection in Lagos, said, “We are setting up our clinical trials in Lagos, in collaboration with institutions and the Centre for Disease Control and, hopefully, by this time next week, we should have started some clinical trials on our patients and staff in Lagos.”
Continuing, the commissioner said, “We have 2,645 passengers of interest that we are tracing, 352 of them have completed their 14-day isolation and we are still following up 2,293.
“In the next few days, most of them will exit their 14-day isolation.
“Passengers of interest are the persons that have flown into Lagos on a flight where we had identified a confirmed COVID-19 patient.
“The risk is that, being on that flight with a confirmed case, they have been exposed and there is a possibility that they will manifest with COVID-19.”
He, however, added that there is no cure for COVID-19 yet.
“If you catch COVID-19, you will either eliminate the virus yourself or we will give you some treatment that will help you to eliminate the virus.
“Or if you have co-morbidity that reduces your ability to fight it with your immunity, then the virus may cause organ complications and the virus will overwhelm the individual and the ability to destroy the infection.
“It’s not as if we have a drug; we only have drugs that can slow down infection while your own body’s immunity will work to eliminate the virus,” he said.
According to him, there are lots of research going on to find a cure for COVID-19.
“It’s possible that in the nearest future, we may have what we may describe as a definitive cure for COVID-19,” Abayomi said.
He also lamented that many people calling the dedicated call line for COVID-19 were not serious callers.
“80 per cent of the calls we receive on our hotline (08000CORONA) are hoax calls; people calling in to test the numbers, to make pranks with aggressive language.
“These calls are blocking call centre lines and, unfortunately, making it difficult for people that really need help to get through.”
Abayomi lamented that the number of cases without a travel history has increased from 45 percent to 80 percent, saying, “This demonstrates that there is more local transmission going on, as importation of cases is decreasing.”
As it stands, Lagos leads the toll of Nigeria’s COVID-19 infections, with 120 of the overall 232 cases.
So far, Lagos had discharged 29 patients, while two patients have been evacuated and recorded two COVID-19-related deaths.
