COVID-19: No data from Lagos Thursday as Nigeria records 864 new cases

Nigeria on Thursday reported 864 new coronavirus infections from 24 states across the country, according to health officials.

The new daily figure indicated a significant decrease from the 1,861 infections reported on Wednesday.

Thursday’s relatively low figure occurred because no data was included from Lagos, the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria, which on Wednesday recorded almost half of the day’s total.

No reason was given by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for the non-inclusion of data from Lagos.

A similar situation occurred last Friday when no data was included from Lagos and no reason was given for the situation.

However, in the past, some states that normally record new daily cases, such as Kano, did not record a new case on particular days because no test was carried out on those days, largely due to lack of reagents or workers protest.

Lagos, however, remains the epicentre of the virus in Nigeria with over a third of the total infections.

Over 46,000 infections and nearly 300 deaths have been recorded in the commercial city.

Meanwhile, Thursdays’ 864 new cases raised Nigeria’s infection tally to 127,024 in total.

On Thursday, three people died from the deadly disease which has spread to over 200 countries worldwide, infecting more than 100 million people and killing over two million.

A total of 1,547 people have now died from the disease in Nigeria.

Last week was one of the worst in Nigeria’s COVID-19 pandemic era.

According to a PREMIUM TIMES’ review of data provided by the NCDC, 11,659 persons tested positive for the virus last week (January 17- 23), which is 18 per cent higher than the previous week’s record of 9,880.

Of the over 127,000 new cases, a total of 100,853 patients have recovered across the country.

Meanwhile, there are over 20,000 patients still receiving treatments in isolation centres.

Specifics

The 864 new cases were reported from 24 states – FCT (129), Anambra (87), Rivers (82), Benue (80), Oyo (76), Plateau (61), Kaduna (54), Delta (51), Nasarawa (38), Kwara (36), Edo (32), Katsina (26), Kano (24), Taraba (18), Ogun (14), Sokoto (11), Gombe (10), Jigawa (7), Akwa Ibom (6), Cross River (6), Zamfara (5), Bauchi (5), Osun (4), and Ekiti (2)

Abuja, the second most impacted city in Nigeria, led on Thursday with 129 new cases.

Nigerian authorities a few days ago said the COVID-19 vaccines much expected this month will no longer arrive until February.

Nigeria, a country of about 200 million people, has only conducted over 1.2 million tests for the virus.