Coronavirus: Ogun government discharges three new patients, trace 210 contacts

Ogun State Government has announced the discharge of three new patients from its Coronavirus isolation centre, making it a total of six discharged with three others still under active monitoring.

In a statement made available on the official Twitter page of Ogun State, the State Commissioner for health, Dr Tomi Coker made this known at the COVID-19 situation room of the Ministry of Health, Oke- Mosan.

Dr Coker said that the ministry had also been able to trace about 210 contacts of the Covid19 patients, out of which a 110 have been discharged.

“Ogun State has recorded so far nine cases, of those nine cases, we have good news, we’ve discharged six and the last three were discharged in the last twenty-four hours, we continue to have three active cases we are monitoring closely, we have actually contact traced two hundred and ten individuals, out of the two-hundred-and-ten, we have discharged one hundred and ten, we continue to actively manage a hundred,” she said.

She further disclosed that the first state fully funded molecular laboratory has been installed awaiting the accreditation of the NCDC, adding that as soon as the accreditation is done, the laboratory would help the state to scale up its testing capacity.

The Commissioner noted that the state government would also be taking possession of another molecular laboratory, which she said would help increase the testing capacity of the state to a thousand per day, adding that plans are also in top gear to have testing booths installed in high-risk vulnerable communities which border Lagos State.

“As earlier announced by the governor, the first state fully funded molecular laboratory has been installed and we are waiting for NCDC to accredit this, so that we could scale up testing capacity, aside from that, we are taking possession of another molecular laboratory next week, which will increase our capacity to a thousand a day, additionally, there will be testing booths installed in our high-risk vulnerable communities which border Lagos, we will encourage people to come forward and get tested, especially during this lockdown,” she said

Dr Coker also informed the people of the state that the ministry of health has engaged the mobile laboratory which would be roaming across communities within the state, adding that they have also scaled the number of technicians to sixty, with a mandate to move from door to door within communities in the state with laptops to engage the people with the help of self-assessment tools,which she said would help identify the status of the people.

“We have also engaged the mobile laboratory which will be roaming around our communities & we’ve scaled the number of technicians to sixty that will be in our communities, they will be coming to your doorsteps with laptops to ask and engage you with the self-assessment tools,  these tools will either identify you as low risk, medium risk or high risk, if you are high risk, we will encourage you to be tested.

“Our first focus would be going into the communities where we found patients who are positive,because what we are thinking is are we actually missing contacts we haven’t tested, so that will be our area of priority, but we will also be going into communities where we haven’t seen people that have been positive because we have to have an oversight of the entire state, so, our priority,the border communities with Lagos, like Ota, Obafe, Owode and Ifo, Sagamu, even, we are looking at Odogbolu as well, it borders Lagos, we will be looking at these communities first and we move inward,” she said.

The Commissioner, while encouraging the people to continue to observe social distancing, said that the people should continue to adhere to wearing face masks, observe respiratory hygiene and use soap and water to wash hands often.