Nigeria records highest ever new COVID-19 cases on Thursday

Nigeria recorded 1,964 new COVID-19 cases on Monday – its highest ever daily case count, overturning its previous record of 1,664 daily infections reported on January 7.

The latest figure, recorded in 24 states across the country, has raised the total number of infections to 116,655.

While the high numbers of cases and deaths may be in part due to a marginal improvement in testing, health experts believe the relaxing of guard, weak enforcement of protocols especially in the country’s two major airports in Abuja and Lagos and massive gatherings that proceeded the new year were responsible for the spike.

The death tally from the COVID-19 disease in Nigeria increased to 1,485 with seven additional deaths reported Thursday, according to an update by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Thursday night.

As Nigeria continues to record more coronavirus infections during this second wave of infection, the direct adverse impact has been more fatalities, a situation health officials blamed on the late referral of patients.

Within the last five days, a total of 65 lives have been lost to COVID-19 complications in Nigeria.

On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 15, 14, 15, and 14 daily deaths were recorded respectively.

Last Friday, Nigeria announced its deadliest day of the pandemic with 23 lives lost, the country’s highest daily fatality toll.

In the past four weeks, there have been over 200 fatalities from COVID-19 complications in Nigeria.

Second wave

The rise in mortality shows that the second wave of the pandemic is deadlier than the first as more patients are symptomatic and require breathing support.

Some relatives of patients who died from COVID-19 have shared harrowing experiences of how their loved ones died gasping for air due to shortage in oxygen supply in some of the foremost isolation centres in the country.

On Thursday, the federal government approved over N6 billion for the provision of oxygen tanks in 38 places across Nigeria.

Active cases in Nigeria rose sharply from about 3,000 about two months ago to over 20,000 due to a rise in new infections.

Of the over 116, 000 cases so far, 93, 646 patients have been discharged from hospitals after treatment.

Specifics

The 1,964 new cases were reported from 24 states – Lagos (824), FCT (246), Plateau (166), Kaduna (128), Ogun (76), Nasarawa (74), Anambra (69), Edo (50), Rivers (45), Ondo (44), Niger (40), Oyo (38), Adamawa (35), Kano (31), Akwa Ibom (27), Gombe (19), Kwara (13), Ekiti (12), Delta (6), Kebbi (6), Bauchi (5), Ebonyi (4), Osun (3), and Zamfara (1).

Lagos, again led with 824 new cases on Thursday, nearly half of the daily tally.

The commercial city is Nigeria’s coronavirus epicentre with a total of over 43,000 confirmed cases and over 280 deaths.

The Minister of State for Health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, warned Nigerians against complacency in containing the COVID-19 pandemic as the much-awaited vaccines may not arrive the country as soon as expected.

So far, Nigeria has conducted over 1.2 million COVID-19 tests.

Amidst the continuous surge in the number of coronavirus cases in Nigeria, a survey has found that nearly a fifth of Nigerians still do not believe the disease is real.

The study by the research firm, SBM Intel, in all 36 states and the FCT, found that only 68.8 per cent of Nigerians believe that the virus is real.

The report said 14.4 per cent of Nigerians were not sure that COVID-19 is real, while 16.7 per cent did not believe it is real.