Covid-19: Lagos starts house-to-house search for 4000 suspects among over 20m residents

In a drastic move to identify and isolate all Lagosians infected with Covid-19, the Lagos government has decided to grasp the nettle: conduct a house-to-house search for infected citizens.

Lagos population is on the order  of 20 million, and the state health authorities earlier said it tracing out 4000 people suspected to have contracted the virus.

According to a statement from the Lagos Ministry of Health on Thursday, the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, confirmed this move during a joint ministerial press briefing on COVID19 intervention in Lagos State held on Thursday in Alausa, Ikeja.

Abayomi said the COVID19 case identification campaign tagged the ‘Community Active Case Search’ is expected to run for two weeks in the first instance across the state.

“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 enquiries about symptoms of cough, cold and fever,” he said.

“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.”

Officials conducting the search can be identified with the COVID-19 outbreak response tags and letter from the Local Government.

There indications that people down with the virus are hiding at home instead of coming out for treatment.

The fear of community transmission, which has been on the rise, might have motivated the state government to take this approach.