The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has recorded 341 new cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19, bringing the total number of infected people in the country to 155,417.
The NCDC disclosed this on its official Twitter handle on Saturday.
It is exactly one year ago, February 27, 2020, that Nigeria recorded its COVID-19 index case, believed to be the first in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Till date, 155, 417 cases of the disease have been confirmed, while 133,256 patients have been discharged and 1,905 COVID-19 related deaths recorded in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
In the past 24 hours, the NCDC has recorded three COVID-19 deaths, raising the total fatalities in Nigeria to 1,905.
The Nigerian health agency said that the new infections were reported from 20 states and the FCT.
According to the agency, the new cases were reported in Lagos-96; Rivers-41; Kaduna-33; Edo-21; Osun-20; Akwa Ibom 17 and the FCT-17.
Ondo reported 15; Gombe-11; Kano-11; Imo-10; Ekiti and Kebbi had nine each; Kwara and Oyo state recorded eight each, while Borno had six; Enugu and Plateau. three each; Delta, Niger, and Ogun had one each.
The NCDC stated that Saturday’s discharged cases included 319 community recoveries in Lagos State, 121 in Kaduna State and 38 in Rivers.
The agency said that a multi-sectoral national Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), activated at Level 3, had continued to coordinate the national response activities in the country.
The public health agency said that the number of active COVID-19 cases in the country currently stood at 20,183 in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Boss Mustapha, has confirmed that Nigeria will on Tuesday, March 2, receive the first tranche of COVID-19 vaccines.
Mustapha, who is also the chairman, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, made the disclosure on Saturday in Abuja while evaluating the country’s fight against the disease.
“They (vaccines) should depart India on March 1, 2021 in the night and arrive in Abuja on the 2nd of March, 2021, ” he said.
Nigeria is set to receive its first four million shipment of COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX, a global scheme set up to procure and distribute vaccines for free, as the world races to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
COVAX, which was set up in April 2020 to help ensure a fairer distribution of coronavirus vaccines between the rich and poor nations, said it would deliver two billion doses to member-states by the end of 2021.
Nigeria’s four million vaccines would be its first COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility.
The facility promised access to vaccines for up to 20 per cent of participating countries’ population with an initial supply beginning in the first quarter of 2021 to inoculate three per cent of their populations.
The Nigerian government had earlier announced that the first four million doses of the vaccines would arrive in the country by the end of February.
The SGF disclosed that the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) would be organising the shipment from Mumbai, India, with the World Health Organisation (WHO), both backers of COVAX.
Meanwhile, the PTF chairman praised Nigeria’s health workers and the various frontline workers for working hard to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Mustapha, while evaluating the county’s response to COVID-19 in the past year, said the PTF had performed “very well’’ with a very robust national response.
“We have succeeded in discharging our mandate of managing the pandemic with a well-defined process and a robust national response,” he noted.
The SGF said that the strategies evolved by his committee to manage the pandemic had been replicated in some other countries, especially the compulsory Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing for travellers.
He explained that the pandemic had helped the country to scale up its health infrastructure, citing the increase in the number of infectious diseases testing laboratories from four to 132 across the country.
Nigeria’s Health Minister, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, on Wednesday, admitted that the country may have to wait till March to receive its first doses of the vaccines.
Ghana received 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines on Wednesday, making it the first country on the continent to benefit from the COVAX programme.
Cote d`Ivoire, a country with more than 32,000 COVID-19 cases and 188 deaths, also received over 500,000 doses of the Oxford-Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Friday.
