Nigeria’s COVID-19 toll hits 5445 with 288 new cases

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed 288 new cases on Friday with a significant increase in recovery cases, TopNaija reports.

A total of 5,445 confirmed COVID-19 cases have now been recorded in 34 states and the federal capital territory (FCT).

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC, 179 of the new cases were discovered in Lagos alone. 20 in Kaduna, 15 in Katsina, 15 in Jigawa, 13in Borno, 11 in Ogun, 8 in Kano, 7 in FCT, 4 in Niger, 4 in Ekiti, 3 in Oyo, 3 in Delta, 3 in Bauchi, 2 in Kwara
and 1 in Edo.

In his response to a question at the presidential task force on COVID-19 briefing on Friday, Chikwe Ihekweazu, the NCDC director-general, had acknowledged the gradual drop in the number of cases over a few days, but said the period under review wasn’t enough to assume that the curve was flattening.

“It’s never good to interpret rises or drops in days. So, when you see one, two days of an increase or a decrease, you’ll never see me come out and say cases have increased or decreased,” he said.

“We look at trends over time and we’ll continue to monitor this over time and if we do see a consistent decrease, then we’ll be happy. But it’s way too early to interpret results on a day-to-day basis. We’ll rather take it on a week-to-week or two-week basis.”