First Coronavirus case: Lagos govt. says “no cause for panic”

 

The Lagos State Government says there is no cause for panic, even as the state records the first coronavirus case in the country.

Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu allayed the fear of residents on Friday during a news conference held in Lagos on the intervention and measures deployed to arrest the situation.

Sanwo-Olu said that there was no cause for alarm as the first patient was stable and every health intervention that was required is currently being given.

”And we can say that we are ready and we are just hopeful that we can very quickly put this behind us,” he said.

As part of measures to contain the outbreak in the state, Sanwo-Olu said a number of people who might have had contacts with the patient who flew into Lagos on board Turkish Airline from Milan, Italy were been identified and placed under strict surveillance.

The governor urged citizens and residents not to panic, but to maintain personal and environmental hygiene, as part of measures to tackle the outbreak of Coronavirus.

”Generally, we should observe proper personal and environmental hygiene. This disease is virus, it has to do with your hygiene, personal and environmental.

”We implore Lagosians and Nigerians in general to continue to maintain clean and hygiene environment and take care of their own personal hygiene, you wash your hand with soap and water as often as you think you have access to it.

”This is just to continue to ensure that your own personal hygiene is top most at all times,” he said.

According to the governor, one should also stay away from somebody that is coughing or sneezing too often.

”So, if it is two weeks if you think you are sneezing or coughing. You should also self regulate yourself by ensuring that you are not doing that right in front of people,” he added.

The Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said that the state government had started tracing persons that might have had contact with the index case of the COVID-19 infection in Nigeria.

According to him, the development is in order to start the isolation and containment of exercise that would break the cycle of transmission of the disease.

The commissioner said that the Italian patient was actually brought in from Ogun State, since Lagos State had the facility to conduct test to ascertain the disease.

Abayomi said that the state had set in motion, efforts to expand its isolation capacity, in case of emergency.

”The important thing to know is that the patient is confined and we have started to identify his contacts all the way to the airline. That process started around 3.00a.m. this morning.

”We would like to assure everybody that we are on this case to ensure that we can identify everybody that he must have come into contact with.

”His symptoms are subsiding and he does not have signs of respiratory disease which is a good thing, but he does have fever and body pains. If he had respiratory illness it is probably likely that he may be more contagious than he is at the moment.

”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 commander.

”We need more capacity in case we have an increased number of cases in Lagos,” he said.

Abayomi also disclosed that Lagos has a very aggressive public awareness campaign going on and had engaged in extensive training across the hierarchy of health professionals in the state.

”In addition we are building capacity to diagnose in Lagos and right now we can run the test in two centres in Lagos, one is in the biosecurity facility and the other at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH).

”We are in constant contact with the Nigeria Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) and the Minister of Health in Abuja,” he said. (NAN)