Coronavirus: Lagos govt says it is tracing everyone who came in contact with index patient

The Lagos state government says it is hard at work to trace and possibly isolate everyone who had physical contact with the index coronavirus patient in Nigeria.

The Italian arrived Lagos aboard a Turkish Airline flight on Tuesday, February 25, 2020 and took ill the day after.

However, he had embarked on a road trip to Ogun State, which borders Lagos, complicating the job of tracing everyone he may have been in touch with, before he was confined to a hospital bed in the nation's commercial capital.

Everyone who was on the same flight with the index patient, will also be traced, quarantined and observed for 14 days.

“The movement of this traveler from the airport through Lagos to Ogun state... we are busy identifying any person that could have possibly come in contact with him so that we can start our isolation and containment exercise to ensure that we break the cycle of transmission,” Lagos State Health Commissioner, Prof Akin Abayomi, told the press during a briefing on Friday at the Lagos House in Marina.

Prof. Akin Abayomi, Commissioner for Health, Lagos state. [Twitter/@ProfAkinAbayomi] Pulse Nigeria

Abayomi also said the state is shoring up its capacity and facilities in order to deal with the virus.

“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 we have an increased number of cases in Lagos," he said.

Lagos Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, had earlier stated that Nigeria’s most populous city and commercial capital has the facilities to contain the spread of the virus--the first such case in sub-Saharan Africa.