Nigeria has confirmed 497 new cases of the deadly coronavirus.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, confirmed the cases on Saturday night via its official website.
The 497 new cases are reported from 18 states- Lagos (211), Akwa Ibom (80), Kwara (73), Osun (29), Oyo (17), Rivers (17), Cross River (15), Edo(14), Anambra (9), Ogun (8), Ekiti (6), Bayelsa (4), FCT(4), Plateau (4), Bauchi (2), Nasarawa (2), Kaduna (1) and Jigawa (1).
These latest figures bring the total number of confirmed cases to 173,908 with 164,994 discharged and 2149 deaths recorded so far.
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The NCDC noted that “A multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continues to coordinate the national response activities.”
It is earlier reported that, Nigeria has so far recorded 10 new cases of the Delta COVID-19 variant.
The Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu disclosed this at the ministerial briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja,
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Delta variant is recognised by the World Health Organisation as a variant of concern, given its increased transmissibility.
The variant has so far been detected in over 90 countries.
Ihekweazu, who was represented by Mrs Elsie Ilori, Director of Disease Surveillance Department, while giving an update on Nigeria’s COVID-19 situation, said that while progress had been made in response to the ongoing pandemic with the fact-paced development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccines globally, variants of concern with increased transmissibility pose a threat.
“With sequencing efforts, we have detected 10 cases which are confirmed to be the Delta variant.
”We are working hard to ensure genomic surveillance of travellers’ samples and to scale up our genomic sequencing capacity.
“While doing this, we are scaling up our testing capability, by the rollout of rapid Diagnostic Test Kits (RTDs), in selected states nationwide.
“As we have mentioned before, we encourage congregate settings, such as hospitals, schools, workplaces and correctional facilities, to take advantage of the WHO, approved RTDs kits to detect cases promptly,” he explained.
The NCDC boss disclosed that the country’s test positive rate based on Polymerase Chain Reaction test alone, which he noted was an indication used to understand the level of virus transmission increased to 3.4 per cent in the country.
