During a press conference on Friday, Abayomi stated that people arriving in the country from high-burden countries might further spread the virus.

“Many Nigerians living overseas would be going home to enjoy Christmas with their families,” he stated. The majority of these people will be arriving from places where COVID-19 is prevalent and where we know the virus is evolving and mutating.

“The potential drivers of the fourth wave in Lagos and Nigeria are passengers arriving, especially from heavy-burdened countries in Europe and the United States into Lagos. About 86 percent of all inbound flights into Nigeria come through Lagos.

“It is only inevitable that if passengers are traveling in large numbers from these countries where they are about to experience the fourth and fifth wave, we should expect some activities in Lagos as a result of these movements. At the current rate of the response across the country, we are likely going to encounter a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2021.”

The commissioner bemoaned Nigeria’s poor vaccination rate, claiming that numerous nations have immunized more than half of their eligible populations.

“The other difficulty we have in Lagos and Nigeria is that our immunization rate has been pretty low; it is just around three percent, although our aim should be above forty percent,” he said. Many countries throughout the world have achieved immunization rates of more than 50% of the eligible population.

“At the current rate of the response across the country we are likely going to encounter a fourth wave of the COVID pandemic in December 2021. Lagos State has only vaccinated about 2.6 percent of its population, leaving it susceptible to a fourth wave.”

He noted that fully vaccinated people with a vaccination breakthrough infection were less likely than unvaccinated people to develop serious illness and get COVID-19.