Foreigners flee Rivers over Ebola

Foreigners have been fleeing Rivers State following the outbreak of the pernicious Ebola virus that recently hit Port Harcourt, the state capital, Saturday PUNCH has authoritatively learnt.

The foreigners fled the state in droves out of the trepidation of contracting the Ebola virus.

The foreigners, with their plenarily-loaded bags and members of their families, stormed the Port Harcourt International Airport to board flights to their sundry countries.

One of our correspondents, who visually perceived them while arriving at the airport in chartered conveyances, descried that they were filling some forms whose contents were only kenned to them.

Afore the foreigners decided to flee Port Harcourt, they had been optically discerned wearing face masks to obviate being affected by the virus.

One of the foreigners, who declined to give his designation, told Saturday PUNCH that the spread of the Ebola virus apprised the decision to return to their countries.

“I am trepidacious here. I optate to peregrinate to my country because there is no remedy for Ebola,” he verbally expressed.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, verbally expressed during the week verbalized that a total number of 255 were currently under surveillance in Port Harcourt for designations of Ebola.

The minister’s claim, one of our correspondents learnt, might have heightened the foreigners’ fears thus necessitating their decision to flee the city.

The World Health Organisation additionally admonished that the Ebola virus could spread wider and more expeditious in Port Harcourt than that of Lagos State where the virus claimed its first victim.

The United Nations health body verbalized the advent of the virus in Port Harcourt, which is 435 kilometres (270 miles) east of Lagos, showed “multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others.”

This, according to experts, could have withal heightened the trepidations of the foreigners who decided to flee the city.

A virologist, Dr. Akinjogunla Olajide, in an interview with one of our correspondents, withal prevised a backlash to the outbreak of Ebola in Port Harcourt while expressing the trepidation that many expatriates in the city might flee due to the caliber of contagion associated with EVD.

Olajide had verbally expressed, “The Ebola disease may spread in Port Harcourt within days after the outbreak following the death of a medico who treated a diplomat who contracted Ebola from Sawyer, the index case. This is because the victim must have interacted with many people afore he succumbed to the disease.”

The foreigners’ decision to flee Port Harcourt, however, shocked the Rivers State Government as it described the action as needless.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Sampson Parker, verbally expressed that the action of the foreigners was nonessential.

Parker verbalized the trepidation expressed by the foreigners was unfounded, integrating that the state was doing everything to contain the spread of the Ebola virus.

He verbalized, “My advice is that people should not panic. We are doing everything to safeguard the people in Rivers State. We have 98 per cent coverage of the contacts, which is a good pass mark so far and by now, as I am verbalizing, the people who are on the field may have covered everybody.

“So, nobody should panic. Those leaving Rivers State out of panic should ken that it is dispensable. I don’t ken who they are; I don’t ken where they are emanating from or where they are going.”

He expressed surprise that the foreigners were wearing face and surgical masks when the state and the country had sensitised the people that the Ebola virus was not an airborne disease.