After absconding, Abia State wanted COVID-19 patient, finally arrested

Abia State government has arrested a suspected COVID-19 patient, Vincent Prosper, that was declared wanted yesterday

This was disclosed by the Commissioner for Information in the state, Chief John Okiyi-Kalu.

Prosper, who had disappeared after alerting NCDC of manifesting symptoms of COVID-19, was apprehended Saturday morning in Aba.

According to Kalu: “Prosper called to report that he was manifesting symptoms of the virus and recently had contacts with a confirmed patient in Akwa Ibom state in addition to recently returning from Lagos.

But when our team arrived at his given location, he disappeared and later confessed that he saw the ambulance and the fully kitted RR-team, lost courage, detested the possibility of being locked down and decided to switch off his phone and disappear into thin air.

We continued to look for him quietly and at some point got him again on the phone and he gave us a wrong address at Azikiwe Road and a team was immediately dispatched to the location but did not find him there.

At that point, we decided to enlist the services of a top security agency in the state to find him and also alerted members of the public yesterday regarding the situation in the hope that he would voluntarily come forward. He never did!

But late last night, the security agency pinned his location down and this morning our RR-team stormed the location with security agents and took him into custody at our isolation facility where we have now collected samples from him for testing.”