The Lagos state
government says the coronavirus index patient arrived the country on a Turkish
Airline flight on Monday night.
Akin Abayomi
(pictured), the Lagos state commissioner for health, was addressing journalists
at the Lagos House in Marina on Friday.
“We have a traveller
that started his journey from Milan on Monday, February 24, he transited
through Instanbul on Turkish Airlines and arrived in Lagos on Monday night at
9pm,” Abayomi told journalists.
“He spent the night
in a hotel near the airport and on Tuesday morning, he moved down to his
business in Ogun state where he is engaged by a corporate entity.
“He carried out
business within the confines of that company on Tuesday and in the early part
of Wednesday. He spent the night in their accommodation which is a confined
environment.
“By the afternoon,
he started to develop symptoms of high fever and body pains. He presented to
the company’s medical facility where the investigation began.”
Abayomi said efforts
are ongoing to identify all the people the patient could have come in contact
with on the flight.
This search, he
said, would be extended to all those he could have come in contact with during
his journey from Lagos to Ogun.
According to the
commissioner, the state is building up capacity in the event that more cases
are reported.
“In Lagos, we have
been building capacity heavily with fortified support at the airport by sending
state health professionals to support health authorities.
“At our infectious
disease facility, we have ramped up capacity to isolate suspected cases.
“We are now sitting
on an about 80-bed isolation facility because of the emergency funds that have
been released by the incident command.
“We are continuing
to build more capacity should in case we have an increased number of cases in
Lagos.”
Describing the
patient’s movement in an interview with TVC News, Obafemi Hamzat, the Lagos
state deputy governor, said: “He came in from Italy in Milan. He has a
consultancy job for a company in Ogun state. So he landed on the 26th and went
to Ewekoro and then he fell ill.
“The doctors were
smart enough to say this is somebody that is just coming in from Italy and fell
ill suddenly. So we sent an ambulance there with the pep jackets and they
brought him in for a diagnosis.
“The good thing is
that he was brought in yesterday morning and within four hours, he had been
diagnosed so, our diagnosis tools seems to work better than we expected.
Normally, it takes 8 hours.
“The doctor said
that he is going to be fine. The challenge is not for people to have the virus.
“What we are doing
now is that he came through one airline so they are trying to track everybody
on that flight. He went from Lagos to Ewekoro, who has he met? So, those are
the people they are tracking to isolate them and then carry out checks.”
The patient is
currently isolated at the Lagos state biosecurity laboratory in Yaba.
The health
commissioner said the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) has also been
equipped to diagnose cases.
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