Prof. Abayomi stated this on Thursday during a media training on COVID-19 response with the theme, ‘Gender & Social Inclusion in COVID-19 response: The Role of the Media’, organised by the state Ministry of Health in collaboration with Lafiya Project.

Giving COVID-19 update in the state, the commissioner, who was represented by the Incident Manager, COVID-19 Lagos Response, Dr. Ismail Abdulsalam, said, “Very importantly, we must intensify effort in the area of risk communication and social mobilisation.

“We have experienced a very sharp increase in the number of cases that we are having, with most of these cases requiring oxygen flow to remain alive.

“That is really worrisome. We experienced this late May to early June and it is coming back.”

The commissioner noted, “We need to ask ourselves questions: ‘why are we having increase in number of cases requiring intensive care?’

“The number of deaths have also increased.

“We now have 25,128 confirmed cases; 304 deaths and 23,562 recoveries.

“We have 37 [persons] on admission. Total test done so far is 198,571 and 221,416 samples collected. Our positivity rate is now 12. 2 per cent; before, it was 3.5 per cent.”

According to the commissioner, the implication now is that there is need for increased awareness for people to adhere to COVID-19 protocols.

“Our role is to ensure that members of the community have correct information. There are a lot of misconception and myths going on in the community. Most of our people believe up till now that COVID-19 is not real. That is worrisome”, he said.

source: Punch