The Lagos State Health Commissioner, Prof. Akin Abayomi, has announced that all 179 people in isolation in Ogun and Lagos States, who had contact with the the index patient (Italian national who brought coronavirus to Nigeria), have been released.

At a briefing on Friday, March 13th, 2020, Abayomi said that the 179 contacts were traced to the Italian patient. He added that since they had all passed the mandatory fourteen (14) days of isolation, they have been discharged, as none of them showed any symptom of the COVID-19 disease.

He said the index patient was still on admission because he was still secreting coronavirus.

The Italian is perfectly well now, we are only keeping him because he still has some secretion of the virus. The test shows that anytime from now, he may be negative. If he is negative, we will conduct another test within 48 hours after and if he is still negative, we will set him free.

Abayomi said:

We are close to discharging the index case, we want to be sure he poses no danger to the society anymore.

Regarding the Nigerian who initially tested positive to coronavirus for being in contact with the Italian national, Abayomi said he had since tested negative twice and has as well been released.

His tests initially showed that he was positive to coronavirus twice and now, he has tested negative to the virus twice on two consecutive tests carried out. The remaining contacts in Ogun and Lagos States remain symptom-free and they have exceeded 14 days surveillance, which means that we have been able to interrupt the transmission between the index case and others. The index case and its threat to Nigeria have been eliminated.

The commissioner said:

Those isolated in Ogun State have been discharged; in Lagos, we will not follow up with the contacts again because none of them developed symptoms. We are discharging all,

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.