Man Receives Quit Notice for Exhibiting COVID-19 Symptoms

In Abia State, there is a case my organization traced and tracked since Thursday, March 26, 2020. This young man traveled to Port Harcourt to purchase materials for his art work business about 3 weeks ago. As he came back from Port Harcourt on that business trip, he started exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19 infection.

As at Wednesday, March 25, 2020 someone from a particular radio station contacted him and said he will send officials of NCDC to conduct test on him which never happened. The next thing that took place was that the young man's name was mentioned at that particular radio as having the virus. With this information, the landlord of this young man, gave him quit notice and his neighbours equally isolated or distanced themselves from him. It was at this stage, I intervened and had to go on air through another radio station to clear the matter. My organisation  contacted the Head Abia State Epistemology Dept. and the Executive Secretary Abia Primary Health Care Development Agency who are members of Covid-19 prevention team in the State to come evacuate the young man and place him under surveillance/test. Series of effort to speed up the process was counter productive between 10:30 am to 2:53 pm.

In between this period, a call was NCDC Abuja with the young man's details. They in turn sent the same details to the State chapter. All these were happening on Thursday. The young man complained that some of his neighbours had started coughing profusely since it is one of the symptoms himself is displaying. More pressures were mounted, then very early this morning 28/03/2020, an ambulance arrived Aba precisely to the compound where the young man lives and evacuated him to Amachara Specialist Hospital in Umuahia. All through the journey, I maintained a close contact with him but he said that as they arrived the supposedly isolation centre, there was nothing inside the said facility apart from a chair that he sat on and that the staff at the centre were even very afraid to come close to him. He was served a snacks around 12:49 pm today Saturday, March 28, 2020.

He was released to go back to Aba and that his results will be made available to him on Monday, March 30, 2020.

My major worry for penning this down is that  he was discharged this evening and was told he is alright.

That leaves me with these questions:

* Is our system really serious and ready in fighting this virus if eventually there is an upsurge of same in terms of overwhelming number of infected people ?

* Has the number of hours required for this test result to come out changed in our clime ?

* Why this hurry in discharging this young man.

* Why is it that on a long run our governments are now serious in issuing stay at home order without clear cut readiness strategies in place to tackle this looming situation ? If there are, can we see some sample of such as Lagos State publicly displayed food items in their kitty to serve as a palliative as at yesterday.

* Why is it that the CSOs are not asking the relevant questions particularly as it relates to the palliative measures that will be put in place to ameliorate the sufferings of citizens as it concerns those that survives on daily income ?

* Why, why, why ........