Italian Patient Recovering from Coronavirus, Says Lagos Govt

Italian Patient Recovering from Coronavirus, Says Lagos Govt

Martins Ifijeh and Ayodeji Ake

The Lagos State government has said the Italian patient who tested positive to Coronavirus last week was recovering from the disease.

Stating this at a press briefing in Alausa Wednesday, the Commissioner for Health, Lagos State, Prof. Akin Abayomi said apart from him, there was no suspected case currently isolated at the centre.

He said: “We test the Italian patient every day to ascertain whether the virus is still in him or not. This gives us the indication whether he is still contagious or not.

“Sometimes, there is a little bit of rebound in the virus’ pattern before it finally goes away. The test that we are performing are extremely sensitive. So far he is doing well and recovering,” he said.

Abayomi said one of the difficulties the state was having in tracking down persons who travelled via Turkish Airlines with the index case into Nigeria was the inaccurate contact details in their forms.

“Some of the travellers didn’t provide accurate figures, so we are unable to get them.

“Of the 159 passenger that boarded the aircraft with the index patient, 84 resides in Lagos and only 49 have been contacted, while the remaining 35 are still unreachable. 65 people have left Lagos either to other states or other countries. We have contacted the World Health Organisation (WHO) and state epidemiologists to reach out to them because they are no longer in our jurisdiction.

“The young man that was on Ethiopian airline tested negative to the virus. So that means we no longer have a suspected case in our centre,” he added.

He said the state’s priority was to stop the virus from spreading within the country, adding that the major focus was at the airport.

“We have deployed 60 staff to the airport, although it is a huge amount of manpower. We have embarked on campaigns in schools through the Ministry of Education. We are working with the three levels of healthcare systems.

“We are looking particularly at people for fever and body pain. If it’s not malaria or cold, then we can test for coronavirus,” he added.

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