Coronavirus: Lagos govt to discharge index case soon

The Lagos State Government has said it has broken the cycle of transmission of coronavirus in the State as it said the index case is getting close to being discharged.

The State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi made this known on Friday while updating newsmen on the State government’s efforts at stopping the spread of the dreaded virus.
He noted that the State has got an outbreak as a result of the State Government intervention.

He said, “The index case remains on admission but he is perfectly well. The only reason we are keeping him is that our test confirms that he is still secreting small amount of virus which means he is potentially still contagious.

Our test suggests that any moment from now his immune system will clear out the infection and the moment we pick that up we will be looking for a second negative.

If after 48hrs, we repeat his test and it comes out negative that means he is consistently deemed to be non-contagious. By implication, he cannot transmit the virus and he cannot infect the community. And at that point, we will discharge him.

But he is no longer contagious to any significant degree. He is still in our custody in order to ensure that he poses no threat to anybody either here in Nigeria or in Europe when he is out of the Ministry’s jurisdiction.

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Soon we will be able to categorically say that we have eliminated the threat of corona outbreak as a result of that Italian index case of corona fever that entered through Lagos on the 24 of February.”

Speaking on his positive contact, he stated that “On the positive contact, his initial tests were positive twice but he subsequently turned negative. He doesn’t have any symptoms at the moment. In fact he is now cleared. We made that decision yesterday after two consecutive negative tests. As we speak either he is being discharged or he is on his way to being discharged.

Meanwhile, the contacts in Ogun and Lagos State remain symptom-free and they have exceeded their 14 days surveillance which means that we do not expect that anybody will become positive as a result of contact with the index case. In simple words that means we have been able to interrupt the transmission between the index case and anybody within this environment.

By and large, all of them are being followed up either directly by the Ministry of Health here in Lagos or by contacting ministries of health in different States. We have been able to identify all the 179 cases and as far as we know there was one transmission to one individual and that individual was identified. He too was put under isolation and that has stopped the spread of corona as a result of this index case.”