Nigeria continues trend of ‘low’ daily COVID-19 infections

Nigeria on Monday recorded 571 new COVID-19 cases, continuing a trend of recording less than 700 daily cases since last Friday. This is the first time the country will record less than 700 cases for five consecutive days since the country began experiencing the second wave of the virus in December; suggesting the worst phase of the viral infection may have passed.

However, the failure of the infectious disease agency, NCDC, to publish the daily figures for the number of tests conducted means the reduced daily infection figure cannot be put in a proper context.

The 571 cases on Tuesday raises the total number of infections in the country to 153,187, according to the NCDC.

Since the increase in infections officially declared the second wave of the pandemic last December, Nigeria had averaged over 1,000 cases daily.

Tuesday’s figure is slightly higher than the 541 cases recorded on Monday and the 521 on Sunday which is the lowest daily toll this year.

The Tuesday figure was, however, a bit lower than the 645 and 662 reported Friday and Saturday respectively.

Meanwhile, Nigeria has conducted 1,489,103 tests so far.

Health experts say low testing in Nigeria masks the severity of the outbreak, a situation considered the biggest challenge in the nation’s management of the outbreak.

Nigeria’s health minister, Osagie Ehanire, on Monday said persons at risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus are among those reluctant to accept hospital admission.

“Findings from Supportive Supervision of treatment centres indicate that vulnerable and “at risk“ persons, are among those reluctant to accept hospital admission, especially if they have no severe symptoms,” Mr Ehanire said at the weekly briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

Deaths

But the death toll from the disease has relatively been on the rise with 12 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday raising the total fatalities in the past five days to 71.

Nigeria’s fatality toll is now 1,874 in total.

Specifics

The 571 new cases were reported from 21 states – Lagos (170), Ogun (65), FCT (45), Kwara (34), Abia (32), Enugu (32), Kano (25), Oyo (22), Ondo (21), Rivers (19), Kaduna (19), Benue (18), Bayelsa (12), Kebbi (12), Nasarawa (11), Akwa Ibom (9), Delta (8), Ekiti (6), Niger (5), Bauchi (3) and Imo (3).

Lagos had the highest daily figure with 170 new cases followed by Ogun and the FCT with 65 and 45 cases respectively.

Of the over 153,000 new cases, a total of 129,943 patients have recovered across the country

Meanwhile, there are nearly 21,000 patients still receiving treatments in isolation centres.

Nigeria is expecting its first batch of four million doses of COVID-19 vaccines before the end of the month.