The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) on Tuesday, commissioned a 60-bed isolation centre for Coronavirus (COVID-19) patients.

Chris Bode, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of LUTH, made this known while briefing journalists shortly after the Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, and the Presidential Task Force for the Control of the Coronavirus inspected the facility

Mr Bode said the minister, the presidential committee, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, came to see LUTH’s preparedness and readiness to admit patients.

“It is better for us to rise up to the occasion.

“With the help and assistance of the minister and Lagos government, we have been able to put together a block of four wards containing 60 beds altogether with enough personal protective equipment and all what we need”.

Mr Bode said that admission would still be done through the pyramid structure and the hospital would be operating under the command of Lagos State government.

“We have a squad of 120 members of staffs, all warriors to combat this condition in LUTH.

”They have all been trained and are experts,” he said.

A section of the new 60 beds isolation centre

He said the hospital was expecting COVID-19 patients who were ill enough to warrant admission.

Mr Bode said the hospital has specialists for tougher cases and the isolation centre had been cornered off.

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He said that there are corridors and pathways for patients that have no business with the isolation centre.

He said that different ways had been mapped out to circumvent movement.

“We do not want anyone to contact what they did not bring to the hospital.

“We are ready and have informed all our staff that non-COVID-19 patients have no business around the isolation ward,” he said.

The CMD said the hospital has always collaborated with the state government in epidemic periods like the Ebola, Lassa fever, Yellow fever, Monkeypox.

He said the hospital infectious disease specialists are working with IDH, Yaba, to treat patients in Nigeria.

(NAN)