#COVID19: Nigeria Records Slight Increase With 566 New Cases In 4 Days
Nigeria's daily COVID-19 cases rose by 22 per cent in four days, raising concerns about a possibly worse situation.
Nigeria has recorded a slight increase in the daily COVID-19 cases with 566 new infections in the last four days, data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) shows.
The new infections amounted to a 22 per cent increase when compared with 444 confirmed COVID-19 cases recorded on Monday, a day authorities announced a third wave of the pandemic, according to the NCDC update on Thursday night, Aug 5.
As the epicentre of the pandemic, Lagos State in the Southwest region accounted for 283 new infections, followed by Akwa Ibom State in the South-south region with 88 cases. Oyo, Ogun, and Ekiti states recorded 62, 17, and 12 cases respectively.
Rivers State in the South-south reported 62. In the North-central, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kwara and Plateau states had 18, 11 and six respectively.
Kaduna and Katsina states in the Northwest recorded two cases each. Zamfara State, also in the region, had three cases.
With this, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nigeria increased to 176,577.
The country recorded 11 fresh deaths, bringing the total to 2,178. At least 165,323 people have recuperated so far with 2.5 million people having been tested since the pandemic began in Feb. 2020.
The uptick in the daily tally has been attributed to the surge of the more contagious Delta variant which was first found in India, amidst a flurry of other factors including the ongoing doctors’ strike and a low vaccine rollout.
In Jan., Osagie Ehanire, Nigeria’s Minister of Health, said 10 per cent of the country’s population would be vaccinated by the end of 2021. But only 1.4 million of Nigeria’s estimated 200 million population have been fully vaccinated so far.
The country recently received a donation of 4 million doses of the Moderna from the United States.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday urged first-world countries to halt the COVID-19 booster shots until at least the end of Sept, to ease the drastic inequity in vaccine distribution between rich and poor nations.
“We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said.
The WHO chief said the delay would help towards the goal of vaccinating at least 10 per cent of every country’s population by the end of September.
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