Coronavirus: LASG Inaugurates Incident Command System

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has inaugurated an incident command system to checkmate possible outbreak of coronavirus.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting at the State House, Ikeja, the governor said the effort is in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, to contain the outbreak of the disease.

He said that he would be the incident commander of the centre, adding that the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, would serve as the deputy commander.

Dispelling a rumour that the virus had already infiltrated into the state, Sanwo-Olu said the government was prepared to forestall its outbreak.

He said: “What we have now is to heighten the state concern in case of any emergency. We are putting in place incident command system. I will take charge as the incident commander.

“It has reached a level I have to be in charge personally, while the commissioner will be my deputy with immediate effect. We will work with other stakeholders where there will be high level monitoring.”

The governor advised residents to embark on self- quarantine, noting: “We will expect people to be self- quarantined. We will do supervised quarantine.”

He said that with the command centre, there would be hotline Nos available to the public, adding that medical personnel were on ground to follow up on a daily basis if there appeared suspected cases.

The commissioner said there is no cause for worry, as there is no suspected case of the virus in Lagos, Nigeria and Africa.

He said that the ministry was ramping up human capacity at the airport to scrutinise those coming in from the East.

Prof. Abayomi said: “The Chinese government announced early in December 2019 of a flu-like virus, which is from corona and SARS virus transmissible from person to person. Seventeen thousand people have been affected so far.

“In Lagos, through the Ministry of Health, the government is working to prevent outbreak of the disease.”

He said Lagos was ramping up field tents in the mainland hospital in case of any eventuality, adding that it had deployed health officials in the ports and Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja to monitor the condition of travellers, especially those from the East.

The Chinese Consul-General in Lagos, Chu Moaning, hailed the state government for preventing the disease.

He said that the Chinese government had mobilised efforts to support the Wuhan- built three new hospitals to take care of the affected persons within 10 days.