14 countries on COVID watchlist, Lagos govt discloses

Lagos state government has disclosed that it has placed 14 countries on COVID-19 watchlist as a measure to prevent a third wave of infections in the state.

This was disclosed on Wednesday by the Lagos commissioner for health, Akin Abayomi at a media briefing to highlight the state’s COVID-19 third wave mitigation strategy.

He noted that the Lagos state government is outlining measures that will guide the management of inbound passengers of interest (POIs) from other countries.

The commissioner explained that travellers coming from other countries into Lagos have been classified into three groups — the red countries, the amber countries, and the green countries.

According to him, India, Brazil and Turkey where new variants of COVID are causing an increase in infection rate are as the ‘red countries’.

“From the Lagos perspective, we’re also looking at what we describe as Amber Colour countries, where we know that mutants are circulating. And this is important for us to be able to define how strict our monitoring of your isolation at home and how your testing is performed. We are monitoring countries where we know the mutants are circulating, but the situation is still severe,” he said.

According to him, the ‘amber countries’ are Canada, US, France, Germany, Netherlands, Togo, Ghana, Cameroun, Angola, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

He listed the ‘green countries’ as countries with no records of variants from red countries and no clear increase in the number of daily confirmed cases.

“Our protocol for management of inbound passengers from the Red Countries will include: a mandatory PCR test 72 hours before departure, PCR test post arrival and a 14-day isolation in a government approved facility paid for by the passenger,” he said.

“Passengers of interests from the Amber Countries are also required to do PCR test 72 hours before departure, PCR test post arrival and a mandatory seven days isolation at home which will be monitored by our logistics, surveillance and EkoTELEMED teams.”