Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, has said that many people in the state who had tested positive for coronavirus were running away from being taken to isolation centres for treatment.
The commissioner, who had earlier on Friday denied testing positive for coronavirus, spoke at the state secretariat later in the day when responding to the question on the discrepancy between the occupancy of the isolation centres and the number of active cases in the state.
According to him, this was one of the reasons the state still has unoccupied beds at the isolation centres despite recording more cases than its bed-capacity.
“There is also a situation that we experience, when we test people, sometimes they find it difficult to find them. The ambulances will go into community, people will flee their homes, and they make it difficult for us to find them,” he said.
Abayomi added that some of the patients also avoid answering their phones as well.
“If you have tested positive, we expect you to cooperate with us and make yourself available so that you can be admitted and accessed,” he said.
“Our isolation facilities are really comfortable, it is not like the Ebola days, we have made a lot of improvements.
“Members of the executive and senior people in government have been admitted into those facilities. If I test positive, I will go to one of those facilities.”
He said the state still has about 307 unoccupied beds out of the 569 total bed spaces available in the state because most patients are yet to be admitted, while most are on the run after testing positive for coronavirus.
With 1,037 active cases of coronavirus as of Friday, the commissioner said the state has 569 bed-capacity and 45 per cent overall occupancy, while 307 bed spaces are available.
