‘It’s a matter of national security’ — Lagos declares co-passengers of Italian patient wanted

March 9, 2020 9:00 pm

The Lagos state ministry of health has released the names of two passengers on board the Turkish Airline flight which brought the Italian who imported coronavirus into the country, declaring them wanted.

At a press briefing on Monday, Akin Abayomi, commissioner for health, gave their names as Enwelunta Obumnore Godfrey and Salami Abiodun Sadeeq.

He said they are wanted because they were among the persons who had primary contact with Nigeria’s index coronavirus case.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“I appeal to members of the public who know or have any information about these 2 contacts to reach the ministry of health through the State epidemiologist on +234 802 316 9485. This is a matter of national security. We need your cooperation on this matter.”

The commissioner also said those who had been in contact with the secondary case of coronavirus will begin a 14-day isolation process.

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

“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.”