Nigeria’s tally of COVID-19 infections on Wednesday evening shot up to 174 from 151 announced earlier by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
According to the new data released by NCDC, five of the 23 new cases were recorded in Akwa Ibom State. Since the onset of the outbreak in Nigeria, this is the first confirmed case in Akwa Ibom.
This brings the total number of states which have reported at least a confirmed case of COVID-19 in Nigeria to 12 and the FCT.
The 23 new cases include nine in Lagos, seven in the FCT, five in Akwa Ibom, one in Kaduna and one in Bauchi State.
With earlier announced cases, a total of 35 cases have been reported on Wednesday. This is the highest number of confirmed cases reported in a day since the beginning of the outbreak in Nigeria.
NCDC in its tweet said “as at 08:00 pm 1st April there are 174 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria. Nine have been discharged with two deaths.”
Details So Far
As Nigeria grapples with containing the spread of the disease, the number of confirmed cases has continued to increase with Lagos topping the chat with the highest cases in the country.
A breakdown of states where cases have been confirmed indicate that Lagos now has 91 cases, followed by FCT – 35, Osun -14, Oyo – 8, Akwa Ibom – 5, Ogun – 4, Edo- 4, Kaduna – 4, Bauchi – 3, Enugu – 2, and Ekiti – 2. Rivers and Benue have one case each.
Nigeria is expected to record more cases as health authorities have embarked on contact tracing to locate thousands of people who have come in contact with infected persons.
The NCDC boss, Chikwe Ihekweazu, also said the government has been working on improving the testing capacity in the country.
Mr Ihekweazu on Monday warned that cases of COVID-19 are expected to increase in the country.
He said the government is focusing on increasing its testing centres and number of people tested daily.
As of this afternoon, Nigeria now has seven laboratories that can test for COVID-19 in the country.
“Last week we had the capacity to test 500 per day, by the end of this week we will be at 1000 a day. By next week we are hoping to get to 1500 a day,” he said.
“We expect cases of COVID-19 to rise as we improve capacity to detect and test. Our labs are activated to function 24/7,” he said.
