Five days after easing lockdown, Nigeria’s virus cases spike by 1,354
By Balogun Damilola
Nigeria’s virus cases have witnessed an increase of 1,354 five days after the gradual easing of lockdown in Lagos, and Abuja commenced.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Friday recorded 386 new cases of COVID-19 in the country, bringing the total number of infections in Nigeria to 3912.
The NCDC also said that 10 new patients have been confirmed dead to the virus in the country, bringing the total number of deaths to 117.
YemieFash reports that this is the highest number of cases recorded in a single day in the country.
NCDC said that cases have been recorded in 34 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
According to it, on May 8, 2020, 386 new confirmed cases and 10 deaths were recorded in Nigeria.
NCDC highlighted that the 386 new cases were reported from 20 states – Lagos (176), Kano(65), Katsina (31), FCT(20), Borno(17), Bauchi(15), Nasarawa (14), Ogun(13), Plateau(10), Oyo(4), Sokoto(4), Rivers(4), Kaduna(3), Edo(2), Ebonyi(2), Ondo(2), Enugu(1), Imo(1), Gombe(1), Osun(1).
Cross River and Kogi states remain the only states that have not recorded COVID-19 cases in Nigeria.
While Lagos remains the epicentre of COVID-19 in Nigeria with 1,667 confirmed cases out of 3912 across Nigeria.
The reports starting after the ease of lockdown in Lagos and Abuja show that Nigeria has recorded 1,354 new cases of COVID-19 and 30 new deaths in five days. While 279 patients have been treated and discharged from isolation centres across the country.
Nigeria has 23,835 samples tested in its ongoing campaign against the deadly COVID-19, which is far less than Ghana and South Africa that have conducted over 100,000 and close to 200,000 testings so far, with South Africa increasing its daily tests to more than 10,000 a day.
One of the major mandates in the Act establishing the NCDC is to support all states in preventing, preparing for, detecting and responding to infectious disease outbreaks.
While COVID-19 has been unprecedented, NCDC said will not relent in supporting the 36 states of the federation.
The agency said that in the last three years, it had supported states in establishing Emergency Operations Centres, rapidly scaled up laboratory capacity and provided other resources for health security at the state level.
It added that these resources were now being used for the COVID+19 response in the country.
Nigeria’s first case of coronavirus was recorded in February 2020.
The Lagos State Ministry of Health revealed in a statement that the case was an Italian citizen who entered Nigeria on the 25th of February from Milan, Italy for a brief business visit. He fell ill on the 26th February and was transferred to Lagos State Biosecurity Facilities for isolation and testing. The patient was later discharged after full recovery and testing negative twice.
At the end of December 2019, Chinese public health authorities reported several cases of acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China. Chinese scientists soon identified a novel coronavirus as the main causative agent.The disease is now referred to as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the causative virus is called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans.
The initial outbreak in Wuhan spread rapidly, affecting other parts of China. Cases were soon detected in several other countries. Outbreaks and clusters of the disease have since been observed in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and the Americas.
According to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, since 31 December 2019 and as of 08 May 2020, 3 807 852 cases of COVID-19 (in accordance with the applied case definitions and testing strategies in the affected countries) have been reported, including 269 068 deaths.
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