Nigeria’s coronavirus infections exceed 48,000

Nigeria’s confirmed coronavirus infections have surpassed 48, 000.

Thursday’s figure, 373, pushed the total infections in the West African nation to 48, 116.

Nigeria has continued to report less than 500 daily coronavirus infections for the past three weeks.

But despite the continued decline in the daily figure of confirmed coronavirus infections, there has been a troubling uptick in mystery cases that health experts believe could upset plans of a full opening of public activities across the country.

Ten deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of fatalities so far to 966. No deaths were recorded on Wednesday.

This was disclosed by the NCDC, the agency heading Nigeria’s national response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the dangerous pneumonia-like disease that has spread to over 200 countries, infecting more than 20 million.

The NCDC said out of a total of 48,116 infected persons so far, about 34, 309 have recovered and have been discharged after treatment in the country’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The 373 new cases are reported from 20 states- Lagos(69), Osun(41), Kaduna(40), Oyo(40), FCT(35), Plateau(22), Rivers(19), Kano(17), Ondo(17), Ogun(15), Abia(14), Gombe(12), Imo(9), Enugu(7), Kwara(6), Delta(5), Niger(2), Borno(1), Bauchi(1) and Nasarawa(1).

Lagos State recorded 69 new cases, the highest of in Thursday’s tally followed by Osun state with 41 new infections.

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Lagos is the hardest-hit state with about a third of Nigeria’s cases (over 16,000) recorded in the country’s commercial capital.

The second most affected place in Nigeria is Abuja, the capital city, with nearly 5, 000 cases.

Nigeria has only tested over 340,000 out of the country’s over 200 million population.

To further boost the country’s testing capacity, the government on Wednesday approved N8.49 billion for the purchase of items needed to test for COVID-19.