Italian with coronavirus in Nigeria was not isolated for almost 48 hours

An Italian man who has been confirmed as Nigeria's first coronavirus case after arriving from Milan was in the country for almost two full days, travelling through Lagos and visiting another state before being isolated.

The man works for cement company Lafarge Africa PLC in the southwestern state of Ogun, the company said in a statement. It said it had identified people who had "direct contact" with him before carrying out "isolation, quarantine and disinfection protocol". The Ogun state governor, in a separate media briefing, said 28 people had been placed in quarantine by the company the man worked for, although he did not mention it by name.

The case, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, has prompted a scramble by Nigerian authorities to try to "meet and observe" all passengers who arrived on the same flight as the man and to identify the places he visited before being hospitalised. "We have started working to identify all the contacts of the person since he entered Nigeria and even those who were with him on the aircraft," Health Minister Osagie Ehanire told reporters on Friday in the capital, Abuja.

Lagos, with 20 million people, is the biggest city in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country. Authorities fear the virus could spread quickly in a region where health systems are already overburdened with cases of malaria, measles, Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases.

Nigeria, with a population of some 200 million people, has a shortage of doctors and hospitals are often poorly maintained. The Italian, whose country has been hit harder hit by the virus than any other in Europe, arrived on Feb. 24 on a Turkish Airlines flight that had a connection in Istanbul, said Lagos state commissioner for health, Akin Abayomi.

After spending the night in a hotel near the airport, he went on Feb. 25 to his place of work in neighbouring Ogun state, and stayed there until he developed a fever and body aches on the afternoon of Feb. 26, Abayomi told a news conference. He was then transferred to a high containment facility in Yaba, Lagos state.

Ehanire said the infection was confirmed on Feb. 27 by the Virology Laboratory of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, and that the man was now quarantined and doing well. Turkish Airlines did not immediately comment on the case. There are no confirmed cases in Turkey.

NIGERIAN ECONOMY AT RISK Officials from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) are heading to Lagos to help address the case, and have activated its national Emergency Operations Centre.

The World Health Organization has said it already has experts on the ground in Nigeria, which it identifies as one of 13 "high priority" countries in Africa. Schools and offices in Lagos provided hand sanitizer to people entering buildings on Friday.

"There's a run on suppliers at the moment for hand sanitizer and masks," said Andrew Garza, chief operating officer of Lifestores Healthcare, a Lagos-based health technology company that provides inventory services to local pharmacies. Garza said some stockists had sold out of hand sanitizer.

Nigerian stocks fell 1.63% to their lowest level in two months on Friday following the announcement of the coronavirus case. The spread of the new coronavirus from China has hit global financial markets, and Nigeria's economy is at risk from the tumbling price of oil, which accounts for 90% of its foreign exchange earnings.

In the East African nation of Kenya, which has no confirmed cases of the virus, the High Court ordered flights from China to be temporarily suspended on Friday. ($1 = 305.9200 naira)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)