By Our Reporters
The Ekiti State Commissioner for Health, Dr Banji Filani, has said three persons have died from Covid 19 complications at its isolation centres in the last two weeks, while the state has recorded 342 cases.
According to Dr Filani about 71 persons were successfully treated and discharged while 342 positive cases were recorded in the ongoing month, adding that the state has sent samples for processing to determine whether the Delta variant was in the state or not.
Speaking during a press conference in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, Filani disclosed that the state government had taken delivery of 46,000 doses of Moderna vaccines which he said “will be given to eligible persons – people above the age of 18, priority groups which include the old, frontline workers and all sort of health and other workers.
Filani, who attributed the high positive cases being recorded in the state to an increase in testing across the 16 local government areas, said, “We will ensure that everyone who is able, who is qualified should get the Moderna vaccines. These vaccines have proven to be safe, effective and efficient. Vaccines save lives, they prevent the ailment, minimise hospitalisation and severity of the ailment.
“We have tested over 3,000 persons this month alone with 342 confirmed cases. Our current positivity rate is 10.6 per cent. We have discharged 71 of the positive cases. We still have a good number of them that are active.
“Unfortunately, we lost three persons in the last two weeks. Two of them were elderly, over 75 years old with co-morbidities. The other was a 45 years old lady who was presented very late. She died a few days ago,” he said.
To prevent the spread of the virus and well preventable deaths, the commissioner said, “The state will continue to strengthen compliance and enforcement, continue to ensure that we have the capacity to test, to enforce compliance and to treat patients. We have over 145 testing centres in our general hospitals, comprehensive health centres and across the entire 16 councils.
“We are working on the private health facilities to ensure that they begin to test everyone who comes with signs and symptoms of COVID-19. We are providing them with rapid diagnostic kits and we will also be training them on how to ensure their recordings are in line with the Federal Government directive through the National Centre for Disease Centre.”