Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo has ordered 46 people who came into contact with Nigeria’s first confirmed Ebola patient onto a no-fly list for at least 21 days, the window in which symptoms are expected to appear after exposure.
Keyamo announced the order in a statement on his verified X account after a virtual meeting with Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate. He said Pate gave him the names of 44 people who dealt with the patient at a hospital after she developed symptoms, plus two members of her domestic staff. Keyamo said efforts are under way to isolate them until it is certain they are not infected, and that aviation authorities must “put them on a no-fly list for at least 21 days.”
He directed the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority to alert domestic and international airlines immediately, and told the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to tighten Ebola surveillance at every international airport. Keyamo said the airports authority already uses enhanced health screening, temperature checks, travel-history tracking and digital health declarations.
His statement left several questions open. It did not name the patient, identify the hospital where the contacts occurred or say whether she was infected inside Nigeria. It also gave no indication that any of the 46 has tested positive.
The case itself was announced Tuesday, Oct. 20, when Pate said laboratory tests had confirmed Ebola in a woman who recently arrived in the capital on an international flight from Uganda. The World Health Organization’s Africa office has laid out the sequence. Her symptoms began Oct. 7, four days after she reached Nigeria. She sought care at a private facility in Abuja on Oct. 11. A laboratory confirmed Bundibugyo virus nine days later, on Oct. 20. Pate said she received treatment at a private hospital for several days before the diagnosis came back.
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Bundibugyo is the strain driving a much larger outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which declared it on May 15. Nigeria is the fifth country to detect the virus, according to WHO. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported 9,552 confirmed cases and 4,602 deaths in Congo as of Oct. 19, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described it as the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record. Kenya confirmed its first case Oct. 6 in a Kenyan resident of Congo who traveled through Uganda and later died. France has reported one case.
The Uganda link raises a practical question that officials have not answered. Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases and two deaths this year and declared its own outbreak over on July 28, after 42 days without a new case. Pate said Nigeria is working with Ugandan authorities, but no official has said where the woman was exposed.
Accounts of who the patient is differ. Pate described her as a woman who had traveled from Uganda. According to reporting compiled by The Eastern Update, an NCDC official said Wednesday that the case involves a diplomat whose condition has deteriorated. Other officials have not repeated that description, and The Eastern Update could not independently confirm it.
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Femi Gbajabiamila, the president’s chief of staff and chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Ebola Preparedness, spoke after an emergency meeting at the State House on Wednesday. He said the task force has worked behind the scenes since its inauguration in June, and credited that work for the quick identification of the case. By his count, about 44,000 flights have moved in and out of Nigeria since June. He said the patient showed no symptoms for four days after reaching Abuja, and that the protocols in place allowed quick identification.
The record of preparation is more mixed. In June, Jide Idris, director-general of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said Nigeria was 59 percent prepared for a potential outbreak. On Oct. 6, the agency said the country had recorded no case and was strengthening detection after Kenya’s confirmation. Sourcing reviewed by The Eastern Update indicates the patient spent nine days between first seeking care and a confirmed diagnosis, and the 44 hospital contacts were exposed during her treatment.
Pate told reporters that contact tracing and isolation are under way and that the WHO, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the NCDC have activated the incident management system. Hospital capacity has also been activated, he said. He described the aim as containing the case, and said that “what is important is that we have found this one case.” He urged Nigerians to avoid spreading rumors.
The airports authority said in a separate statement from its spokesman, Henry Agbebire, that it is maintaining heightened vigilance and coordinating with the NCDC, port health services and the civil aviation authority. It asked passengers to stay calm and to rely on verified information.
Nigeria has handled Ebola before. The country’s 2014 outbreak began in Lagos in July of that year, when an infected diplomat arrived on a commercial flight, and the virus later spread to Port Harcourt. The federal government cited that episode this week as proof of its capacity to respond, and Pate pointed to the same experience in describing the country’s public health physicians.
The NCDC has opened a toll-free line, 6232, staffed around the clock, for reporting suspected cases.
