Nigeria has recorded more than 500 COVID-19 cases in daily figures for the third time on Friday as the government struggles to deal with a new and more infectious variant of the virus.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said figures on Saturday morning showed another 590 cases were reported.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that in July 28, some 535 cases were reported, July 29, 558 were registered and on July 30, 590 cases were logged, which is now the biggest daily increase in the country since March 4, 2021, when 708 cases were registered.
According to the NCDC, the number of cases is rising, so is the country’s testing capacity since the peak of the first wave last year.
The NCDC said that the new daily tally of 558 on Thursday has now been overtaken by Friday‘s 590 cases and these have raised the total infections in the country to 173,411.
It said the country also registered eight new deaths from COVID-19-related complications on Friday, keeping the death toll at 2,148.
The NCDC stated that the 590 additional infections were across registered across 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to it, Friday’s figures are higher when compared with the 558 cases reported 24 hours earlier and ranks highest daily tally since March 4 when 708 cases were reported.
The Public health agency said that Lagos State reported 306 new infections, Akwa Ibom, 54 more cases, Katsina, Oyo and Rivers had 40, 39 and 26 fresh infections respectively.
Other states were Niger-23, Gombe-19, Ogun-16, Ekiti-15, the FCT-10, Nasarawa-10, Delta-9, Bayelsa and Plateau-5 each, Imo-4, Ebonyi and Jigawa-3 each and Kano-1.
The agency said that 48 people have recovered and were discharged from various isolation centres in the country on Friday. It added that till date, 164,978 recoveries have been recorded nationwide in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The NCDC said that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continues to coordinate the national response activities.
The Public Health agency noted that the country had also tested more than 2.4 million samples for the virus out of the country’s roughly 200 million population.
The agency added that the country’s active cases stood at over 5,000.
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