Some persons who flew into Lagos with Italian patient gave us false information- Lagos state govt

Ebun Francis The Lagos state government on Monday some of the persons who flew into Nigeria aboard Turkish airlines with the Italian who tested positive to coronavirus in Nigeria last week gave false information to government officials and health workers battling to contain the spread of the virus.

The state commissioner for health, Prof Akin Abayomi who made the disclosure at a news conference, however, said those who had contacts with the patient are still being traced.

According to him, the government has intensified search for all persons that had interaction with the Italian and that the incident command centre was still investigating possible transmission of the virus, as the centre had identified all the local contacts that interacted with the patient.

Abayomi said, “There were 159 passengers in the aircraft and six people that came in contact with him at the airport. There are 25 people who came in contact with him at the factory; there were two drivers and an ambulance driver.”

“We have quarantined those identified so far at our medical facilities and some of them at home. We are calling them twice a day to check if they are okay. If they develop symptoms, we will bring them to our bio-security facility for test.

“We have identified all of these people except some of the people on the aircraft who have either gone back to Europe and other states. Some of them gave us false information on the phone.

“We are still trying to find the remaining passengers on that aircraft every day. Our contact list is over 100 persons and this number is increasing every day.”