COVID-19: Nigeria may convert schools, hotels to isolation centres

The Federal Government has said that schools and hotels may be converted to isolation centres if the figure of COVID-19 patients rises above the facilities at its various isolation centres across the country.

The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, who gave this hint in Abuja on Thursday at the daily Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 briefing, said Nigeria currently had over 5,000 beds in 112 treatment and isolation centres in the 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

He, however, said there was an urgent need to increase bed capacity to match the number of COVID-19 cases in the country, explaining that not all states had up to the 300 beds prescribed for isolation and treatment.

- Advertisement -

He said,  “In event of overflow, we can require hotels and school dormitories to be prepared for level 1 (Quarantine) and level 2 Isolation (of COVID-19 positive with zero or mild symptoms) so as to  free hospital beds to be dedicated to level 3, (moderate to severe cases) and level 4, (high dependency and Intensive care unit).

“We need to continue increasing bed capacity to match the probable number of patients so that we do not experience horrific scenes of bed space shortages seen in some European hospitals.”

- Advertisement -

Already, Nigeria is using some hotels in Lagos and Abuja as isolation centres for citizens evacuated from other countries.

Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Chikwe Ihekweazu, had earlier said that Nigeria lacked adequate bed spaces to accommodate COVID-19 patients in isolation centres across states.

Already, Nigeria had a total of 8,915 COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, May 28, as 182 new cases were added to the existing figure as announced by the NCDC. The total number of deaths from the virus has climbed to 259 with five deaths recorded on Thursday.  A total of 2, 592 cases have so far been discharged.