Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, has disclosed that the Italian citizen quarantined at the Infectious Disease Centre, Yaba, sufffered depression but he is feeling better.
Abayomi disclosed this while speaking to reporters on Thursday evening while giving update on the coronavirus patient who has spent a week at the centre receiving treatment.
The health commissioner explained that the patient would be released if he gets completed treated and no longer be a threat to society.
Abayomi said: “The Italian has been with us for one week now; his clinical situation is quite stable, the symptoms are dramatically resolving; so, we are expectant that we will continue to make this kind of progress.
“Sometime over the weekend, he developed a respiratory symptom, and we initiated some therapy in the form of ant-viral, which are not curative, but just to make it easier for his immune system to fight the infection. He seems to have responded to that; so we are keeping him on that and there are no side effects.
“As of today (Wednesday), he is in a better spirit; he requested psychosocial support as he was getting a bit depressed because he is isolation. He is the only person in the ward, and of course, very few visitors, because his family is not in Nigeria.
“His last viral load, which is the measure of the virus in his body, shows that the level is going down. If that trend continues he will be better. I can’t give the precise estimate in terms of the date that he will be released, it may not be long, perhaps another week. As soon as he is not secreting the viruses, that means he is no longer contagious. However, to be safe, after we get the first negative, we wait a few days and repeat it and if the second test is negative then we are confident that he can return to the community without posing a danger to other people.”
It can be recalled that the health commissioner had earlier revealed that three suspected coronavirus patients are currently being isolated and their test results are being awaited.
