Lagos State to carry out house-to-house search for people who may have contacted virus through association

LAGOS State health officials are to commence a house-to-house search across all the 20 local government areas in a bid to fish out people suspected of being infected with coronavirus having come in contact with known victims.

Of the 288 cases of coronavirus in Nigeria, 158 of them are in Lagos State because it is the country's main gateway to the rest of the world. Many of those who brought the virus to Nigeria flew in through the Murtala Mohammed International airport on Lagos but a lot of the passengers who were on the same flights as them have not submitted themselves to the authorities.

With a steady rise in the number of cases in Nigeria, the Lagos State government said it will now introduce a tough regime to fish out those who may have the virus. In an exercise tagged Community Active Case Search, that will last two weeks, the Lagos State Ministry of Health has said it will fish out all those on its wanted list who have not turned up for testing.

Professor Akin Abayomi, the Lagos State health commissioner, said officials carrying out the tracing would wear Covid-19 tags and letters from their local government for easy identification. He said: “In the coming days, some of our health workers will be moving around in pairs to administer an electronic questionnaire at homes and healthcare facilities to make inquiries about symptoms of cough, cold and fever.

“This is in a bid to intensify our search for possible cases of Covid-19 in different communities across the state. I implore you to give them your maximum support by providing accurate information that would help in containing this pandemic quickly.”