Despite gross under-testing, incidents of the cases of coronavirus infections in Nigeria rose steadily on Thursday and Friday fueling fears of complacency by Nigerians who may have assumed wrongly that the country has flattened the curve.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, confirmed 343 new cases on Thursday, and 324 on Friday making a 667 within two days. These figures took the total to 68,627.
Of the total figures, 64,467 have been discharged after successful treatment, leaving the country’s active cases at 3000.
But fatalities remain unchanged (at 1,179) as no death was recorded on Friday. However, Thursday’s figures were reported to be the highest since August.
Friday’s 324 new cases were reported from 11 states namely: Lagos (115), FCT (110), Kaduna (57), Taraba (9), Akwa Ibom (8), Plateau (6), Bauchi (4), Ekiti (4), Kano(4), Katsina (4) and Rivers (3).
Again, Lagos and the FCT, the two most affected cities, led in Friday’s tally with 115 and 110 new cases respectively.
Nigeria, a country of over 200 million, has tested only 760,000 people, suggesting that the corona virus infections may run deeper than the public knows.