Coronavirus: Lagos names two missing passengers on plane with infected Italian

March 9, 2020

1 minute read

The Lagos State government has declared two individuals who were in contact with Nigeria’s index coronavirus case.

The Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, during a press briefing on Monday named the individuals as Enwelunta Obumnore Godfrey (Male) and Salami Abiodun Sadeeq (Male).

According to the commissioner, informed suspects who had been in contact with the secondary case of coronavirus will begin a 14-day isolation process.

The secondary case of coronavirus was the individual who had direct contact with Nigeria’s index coronavirus case — a 44-year-old Italian male who is currently quarantined at the Mainland Hospital, an infectious disease facility in Yaba, Lagos State.

Abayomi said: “The secondary COVID-19 patient has had contact with a few people and those contacts will begin a 14-day isolation process.

“As per our protocol, we have the capacity to test so that we can pick up whether any of those in isolation are turning positive and we have tested the 40 individuals in isolation in Ewekoro at the Lafarge factory because that was the group that had close contact with the index case.

“Out of the 40, we detected one positive and that individual happened to have spent a lot of time with the index case by virtue of his job.

“That demonstrates the first transmission for the index case and the good news is that we have the individual under surveillance, so that significantly minimises the chance of transmission to a large number of people.”

The commissioner also said the government was still in search of the remaining two passengers aboard the Turkish Airlines with the Italian coronavirus patient.

He appealed to the two individuals to reach out to the ministry.

“Please we need to contact you and you need to be in touch with the Ministry of Health. We have been trying to reach you by the address you put on your forms and by the numbers but none of those numbers are working.

“It is vitally important that you reach out to us with the numbers that are generally available with the press -08023169485 or 08033565529 or 08052817243 or to the Federal Ministry of Health or to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.”