Lagos State has intensified home treatment for coronavirus patients with mild symptoms as positive cases continue to rise.

Wednesday night, out of the 284 new cases announced by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the state recorded 199.

Ten other states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recorded as follows: Rivers (26); Oyo (19); eight each in FCT and Borno; Plateau (seven); Jigawa (six); Kano (five); Abia (two) and one each in Ekiti, Delta, Kwara and Taraba.

The NCDC put the national tally at 6,677, discharged patients at 1840 and the recorded deaths at 200.

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Lagos State is running out of bed spaces as a result of the number of cases being recorded.

Commissioner for Health Prof. Akin Abayomi, said: “We have exceeded the containment phase now. We are at the active community transmission stage.

“We will be concentrating on people with severe cases and isolating them while mild cases will be managed at home. Our attention is shifting to community-based isolation.”

The commissioner said the state is hoping to make home isolation and care “an official option for some patients”, especially those with mild symptoms of the infection.

While explaining more reason for this rationale, the commissioner said it is due to an increase in the number of people avoiding isolation centres and practising self-treatment at various places.

“There are people who are already practising self/home-isolation on their own, because we can’t find them, the numbers they give us, maybe they are false or they don’t answer their phones. When you go out to pick them at their residences, they have absconded their residences. So, they are isolating themselves in different places.

“In effect, the concept of home-isolation is being practised by many Nigerians, even though it is not yet a state or national practice.

“The people of Lagos are practising home isolation which is one of the reasons that we as the government are trying to transition to home care because it is happening anyway, we might as well regularise it and make it an official option,” the commissioner said.

Mr Abayomi said the state’s isolation and treatment centres are currently 60 to 70 per cent filled.