Laboratories in Ibadan may be upgraded to test centres for coronavirus, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said on Friday.
He emphasised the need to have isolation centres of various categories to meet possible demands of coronavirus cases in their states.
Osagie said he discussed with other governors on the consciousness of having an Intensive Care Unit in each states for the pandemic disease.
The other states are Abakaliki, Maiduguri and others.
He emphasised the need to have isolation centres of various categories to meet possible demands of coronavirus cases in their states.
“Many of the states have been engaged and all governors are conscious of the fact that they need to have centres for treatment and Intensive Care Unit. What is important to know now is that it has become clear that coronavirus manifests itself in several ways. There are patients with no symptoms. There are those with mild, moderate or severe symptoms.
“Only four per cent will present with severe treatment and will need ventilators. Preparing only ICU is not enough.
“We must prepare hospital wings for the mild and moderate cases needed to be isolated and treated. Some only need to be observed. The advisory to states is to prepare isolation centres of different levels for citizens who do not have need for Intensive Care Unit or ventilators but who must be isolated.
“We are trying to reconfigure some laboratories we already have to do coronavirus tests.
“We are looking at the laboratories in Abakaliki, Ibadan and Maiduguri. We have a donation for a laboratory equipment which we are placing in Kano to scale up testing. We have ordered the five functioning laboratories to work 24 hours. We are doing that to increase the number of cases to be tested in a day and increase their turnover.” PUNCH Newspaper quoted him in a report.
