COVID-19: NCDC records 676 new cases, 21 deaths in Nigeria in one day

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has confirmed 676 new cases of Coronavirus infections (COVID-19) in the country, bringing the total number of infected people to 131,918.

The NCDC made the figures available on its official website late Monday.

According to NCDC, COVID-19 infections dropped for the second consecutive day on Monday.

NCDC also disclosed that 21 coronavirus-related deaths occurred in the last 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 1,607 in Nigeria.

It stated that the 676 new cases were reported in 18 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The agency said that Lagos State topped the list with 227 new infections, followed by Rivers with 73 newly infected people; Niger 69 and Plateau 56 cases.

Fifty cases were recorded in the FCT; Kano-44, Oyo-43, Ogun-27, Gombe-18, Ondo-15, Enugu and Osun had 10 each; Cross River and Edo got eight infected people each; Nasarawa had seven; Bauchi, four; Kaduna, three and Ekiti and Zamfara had two each.

The NCDC, however, said that the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 currently stood at 106,275, with 1,286 patients discharged from isolation centres across the country in the last 24 hours.

It said those discharged on Monday included 776 community recoveries in Lagos State and 96 in Plateau that were managed in line with its guidelines.

The agency maintained that a multi-sectoral national Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), activated at Level 3, is coordinating response activities nationwide.

So far 1,302,410 people have been tested in Nigeria since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was recorded on Feb. 27, 2020.

Like the rest of the world, Nigeria is experiencing the second wave of the pandemic, a development that has increased the number of COVID-19-related deaths in the country from 1173 on Nov. 29, 2020 to 1,578 on Jan. 31.

The NCDC has put the challenges Nigeria is facing in tackling the virus to include skepticism among the people, lack of compliance with set guidelines by religious leaders and a very low testing rate.