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The Lagos state government has disclosed the type of drugs used for COVID-19 patients in the state in order to ensure their recovery from the virulent infection.
The Medical Director, Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, Dr Bowale Abimbola, disclosed this in an exclusive interview with EkoHotBlog.
In this trenchant and open-minded interview with the Yaba Infectious Disease Centre helmsman, the seasoned also doctor broke silence over the reports of him testing positive for COVID-19 and what the government is doing to end the scourge
The seasoned doctor in a tete-a-tete conversation with this media outfit, said the COVID-19 patients are treated with a cocktail of drug, he added that one of these cocktails is an antiviral drug.
A cocktail of drug for a patient.
Dr Abimbola added that significant rate of recovery has been recorded with the use of the antiviral drug, adding that most patients by eleventh day of their admission into medical facilities and isolation centre for COVID-19 treatment would have become negative.
He said “for the patients we admit now, there are cocktail of drug that we give to them, one of them is an antiviral drug, and we discovered that people get well on this medication, by day 11 or 12 most of them are discharged because they would have tested negative and this is working for us”
He added that the average length of stay at the Yaba Infectious Diseases Center is between 11 to 12 days.
Experimental study with Chloroquine
Dr Abimbola disclosed that there are plans by the state government to do “experimental study using Chloroquine and that will commence very soon but for now we have an antiviral drug we are using and it’s very effective”
Asked if it was possible for persons who had recovered from COVID-19 to contract it again, Dr Bowale said the probability of such occurrence is very slim because “it is expected that once you have COVID-19 you develop some antibodies, the one that’s called IGG and we also have IGM that’s longer, with that IGM it is expected that you have protection for a while but how long that protection will last is what nobody can say”
COVID-19 patients do not relapse
On what the probability is for COVID-19 patients on the verge of recovery to relapse, he disclosed that such situations do no exist.
He said “We don’t have such, even those that came here in severe form, meaning they have difficulty in breathing, and then we have to give them oxygen and all that, most of them once you give them an oxygen, they get better with time, we get to remove the oxygen and they go home, a few people who come in in very critical conditions are sent to ICU, some of them actually passed on, but once you come in early, especially with those with mild and moderate symptoms or no symptoms at all, we place them on medication and about the 12th day they are discharged
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I tested positive but I’ve recovered.
Dr Abimbola, has reacted to reports of him testing positive for COVID-19.
Earlier in the month, couple of tradition media outfits and online media platforms reported that the Dr Abimbola who treated the index COVID-19 case, an Italian expatriate, in Nigeria had tested positive.
Conversely, the media outfit could not directly ascertain from the doctor his COVID-19 Status as the reports only scantily quoted sources in the hospital.
Asked if reports in the media that he had tested positive for COVID-19 were true, Dr Abimbola answered in the affirmative, he confirmed to EkoHotBlog that he indeed tested positive for COVID-19, he said the COVID-19 test he took at the end of April returned positive and he subsequently went on self-isolation.
He, however, said he had since been treated, discharged and back at work
“About three weeks ago I started coughing and then I had fever, so I ran the COVID-19 test because I suspected that this is likely to be COVID-19, and it turned out to be positive. I was admitted, I was treated and I was discharged, here I’m today back at work, so having COVID-19 is not a death sentence so to say” He added.
Most of the people treated here recovered
He added that most of the patients that were treated at the centre recovered, hence he was upbeat and optimistic about his recovery also.
COVID-19 is real
On how worried should the populace be on the severity of COVID-19 when compared to other diseases in the malarial family with the same symptoms, Dr Abimbola noted that what the state is witnessing now is community transmission of COVID-19 from one person tí another, adding that cases of people coming into the country transmitting the disease had died down
“what we have now is community transmission, the symptoms are similar to that of malaria, you could have cough, fever, bodyache, sore throat, breathlessness, some even suffer lose of taste, the symptoms actually varied, when somebody has any of this symptoms it is always good to do a test to ensure that it’s not COVID-19” he said.
On people’s perception that COVID-19 is a phony health scheme by the government to make money that the disease does not exist in Nigeria, and that even if does exist it is not as grave and severe as the government has made it seem, Dr Bowale said the government was doing enough to make sure proper information on the disease got to the people.
“Government is doing all it can to make sure proper information concerning coronavirus is disseminated to the people, government is using radio, it is using television and social media to communicate to our people, and there is a pillar in the Emergency Operation Centre(EOC) that the Lagos state government set up, so there is a section of the EOC that engages the public, they call them social mobilization. They go to communities markets to educate them about coronavirus. They meet people they do town all meetings, jingles on radio and TV so that people will know COVID-19 is real” he said
He added that many people will demand for pictures as evidence “but it is not possible to put pictures of patients on social media and pages of newspapers because you will be violating their privacy, but the hospitals are full and people have died, I think the social mobilisation might need to expand so that many people as possible can be reached so that they will have appropriate information”
Watch the full video of the interview on our YouTube channel
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