COVID-19: Nigeria records 45 new infections, as WHO reports global surge in fatalities

With no fatalities, Nigeria on Friday recorded 45 new COVID-19 infections – maintaining the trend of low infections recorded within the past few weeks.

But while Nigeria experiences a significant decline in the number of infections, the World Health Organisation (WHO) acknowledged on Friday that 75,000 deaths from COVID-19 were reported last week alone.

WHO disclosed this on its official Facebook account, noting that Omicron is leading to a significant increase in the number of hospitalisations and deaths.

Nigeria’s COVID-19 Update

The latest statistics released by the NCDC early Saturday morning revealed that the new infections were reported across seven states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The new cases have raised Nigeria’s infection toll to 254,182, while the fatality toll still stands at 3,141.

The data also shows that the number of people still down with the illness is over 20,500 while a total of 230,530 people have been successfully treated and discharged in Nigeria since the disease outbreak two years ago.

The disease centre noted that FCT and Oyo State reported a backlog of 17 and three discharged cases respectively for February 16, 2022.

Breakdown

The breakdown of the NCDC data revealed that Lagos State, Nigeria’s epicentre of the disease, topped the infection chart with a backlog of 18 cases for February 16, 2022, followed by Cross River State with seven cases.

FCT came third on the log with a backlog of seven cases for February 16, 2022.

While Oyo State reported five cases, Kano and Nasarawa recorded three cases each, while Ekiti and Rivers states reported a single case each.

NCDC also noted that nine states: Abia, Bauchi, Imo, Kaduna, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, and Sokoto reported that they recorded no cases on Wednesday.

WHO speaks on Omicron Variants

In a video posted on its official Facebook page, WHO COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Kerkhove, elaborates on Omicron and its sub-lineages transmission and severity.

She explained that Omicron has several sub-lineages, which are the BA.1, BA.2, and BA.3, noting that within the sub-lineages, BA.2 is more transmissible.

She said: “It’s quite incredible how quickly Omicron, the latest variant of concern, has overtaken Delta around the world. We could see some further infections of BA.2 after this big wave of BA.1 and I know a lot of people are concerned about this, but this is something that we are looking at.

“Omicron is not, quote-unquote, mild. It is less severe than delta. But we are still seeing significant numbers of hospitalisations of Omicron and deaths.”

She noted that they should not be mistaken for the common cold or influenza.

Preventive measures

The Executive Director, WHO health emergency programme, Mike Ryan, also recommended a slow approach for countries that are lifting all public health and social measures despite high numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

He said: “We do recognise this desire to open up and go back to normal, but if that desire to go back to complete normal will sustain this pandemic going forward for much longer, then we need to think about that.

“And I do think that in some situations, the political pressure now to open up and remove all restrictions of all kinds is so high that we may overshoot the runway.”

Mr Ryan added that if countries lift all restrictions and get hit with another variant, then it will be difficult to get back to normal.

He, however, urged individuals to take preventive measures.

“Reduce your risk of being infected and chances of infecting someone else. Be smart, protect yourself, protect others, get vaccinated, and just be safe and careful,” he said.