Coronavirus Patients Who Need Ventilators Might Not Survive The Disease – Nigerian Government

The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Sani Aliyu has revealed that coronavirus patients who need ventilators might not survive the disease.

Aliyu stated this while speaking at the PTF briefing on Wednesday, where he highlighted the importance of prevention against the disease, especially for the elderly and other at high risk of contracting COVID-19.

“There is 20%-30% survival coming off a ventilator. So that is why it is important in the first instance not to even get COVID-19 because if one gets COVID and happens to fall within the risk groups in terms of the elderly or diabetic or cardiovascular disease, and you end up on a ventilator, you have a greater chance of not coming off the ventilator even in the best health system.

“And that is why people have been dying in Europe, in the United States etc. Most of the deaths have been linked to ventilators.

“We have very few ventilators in the country anyway. So, the 20% that we talked about that would require hospitalisation, are those that would require oxygen and about 25% of them, five would require ventilators.

“But you don’t really want to be in that group. And that’s why we keep on emphasizing on the prevention aspect. Prevention is better than cure and it particularly applies to COVID-19 infection,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian woman has called out the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) over the death of a suspected coronavirus patient named Femi.

The woman alleged that Femi passed away was because the NCDC refused to responded to their phone calls which they had been putting out for hours.