The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has announced 108 new cases of coronavirus in Nigeria as the numbers continue to swell in the last four days taking the new total to 981.
The Centre for Disease Control also announced three more deaths on Thursday.
“One hundred and eight (108) new cases of COVID-19 have been reported; 78 in Lagos, 14 in FCT, 5 in Ogun, 4 in Gombe, 3 in Borno, 2 in Akwa Ibom, 1 in Kwara and 1 in Plateau.
“As at 11:30 pm 23rd April there are 981 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in Nigeria. Discharged: 197 Deaths: 31,” NCDC said.
A break down by NCDC reveals that Lagos now has 582 cases while Plateau state just recorded its index case.
The FCT has 133 cases, Kano -73, Ogun-29, Katsina-21, Osun-20, Oyo-17 and Edo-17 cases.
Other states are Borno-12, Kwara-11, Akwa Ibom-11, Kaduna-9, Gombe-9, Bauchi-8, Delta-6, Ekiti-4, Ondo-3, Rivers-3, Jigawa-2, Enugu-2, Niger-2, Abia-2, Benue-1, Anambra-1, Sokoto-1, Adamawa-1 and Plateau-1.
Also of note is that there are new cases in Kano, northern Nigeria in the last two days despite fears that many residents are dying of unknown causes.
Meanwhile, the NCDC has revealed that 10,000 people have been tested for coronavirus in Nigeria.
The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, who disclosed this at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, on Thursday in Abuja, urged people to stop playing the game of numbers by comparing Nigeria’s testing capacity with that of countries like South Africa, Ghana etc.
According to him, “We have a very good strategy around testing. Until recently, we had about 5,000 test but last week, we have moved from 5,000 to 10,000 tests. We are going to continue to scale up our testing rapidly. We have just got our first set of reagents for high throughput testing.
“We know that the numbers are always thrown around comparing us with South Africa and Ghana, but we are not playing the game of numbers here, these are people’s lives – human beings. Before we test anyone, we go through a risk assessment to make sure it is appropriate to test the person.”
Concerning the situation in Kano state, the NCDC boss said: “We need time. We have reports that there have been deaths. Our first line of action is to verify if it is true and what will be our next line of action if that is the case.
“We have a team that is working with the government of Kano state to verify the incident and make sure that what is going on is actually what is being reported. Then, we will carry out control measures and see if it is an infectious disease, COVID-19, or something else.
“Unlike Lagos that has a gradual increase in cases, the cases are really increasing rapidly in Kano state. Kano state situation is not a very simple thing to manage. We are working with them to increase the organisational efficiency of response. Also, the treatment centre in Kano state have a capacity of about 300.”
