The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Friday reported 387 new cases of Covid-19 across 13 states and FCT. This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 9,302. Out of which 2,697 have recovered and 261 deaths recorded. 66.63% of the new cases were recorded in Lagos state.
The details of the new cases are as follows: Lagos-254, FCT-29, Jigawa-24, Edo-22, Oyo-15, Rivers-14, Kaduna-11, Borno-6, Kano-3, Plateau-2, Yobe-2, Gombe-2, Bauchi-2, and Ondo-1.
According to Thursday 28 May Situation report released by the NCDC, the Provenance of the confirmed 8,915 cases as at 28 May are as follows:
Travel history – 210 (2%), these are those with established record of travel outside Nigeria.
Contacts – 2,088 (24%), these are the people that can be traced to an existing patient(s) of Covid-19.
Unknown exposure – 6,617 (74%), these are people that has no link to existing case(s) and without travel history. This implies that 74% of the confirmed cases in Nigeria is through community transmission.
This is a course of concern as it shows that there is high rate of the virus transmission within the Nigeria. When the poor level of testing being conducted in Nigeria is taken into consideration, in addition to the difficulty in observing social distancing due to the peculiar situation of Nigeria settings, one can only assume that the number of cases will continue to rise as the virus is spreading undetected.
Till date only 58,726 samples have been tested in Nigeria since the outbreak began in a population of about 206 million people.
Demographics of Cases according to the report.
Male – 6,065 (68%)
Female – 2,850 (32%)
Most affected age group
31 – 40 (25%)
Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed has said the country is yet to receive ventilators promised by US President Donald Trump in April. Mr Trump’s said last week that he had sent 1,000 ventilators to Nigeria.
President Trump made the promise of 1,000 ventilators during a telephone call with President Muhammadu Buhari on 28 April. He said the US was committed to helping Nigeria’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Air Force Institute of Technology, based in Kaduna, has unveiled locally made ventilators to help in the fight against Covid-19. The ventilator was made using locally sourced material according to the research team leader.
Captain Osichinaka Ubadike, the leader of the research team said, “The ventilators will go a long way to help not only coronavirus patients but also others with respiratory illnesses,”
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, who is also the Chairman of the Presidential Task force on Covid-19, has said that more Nigerians are dying because they are not receiving hospital treatment for other diseases than are killed by the coronavirus itself.
It was sad and unacceptable that both private and government hospitals were rejecting patients because of fears of contracting Covid-19 he said during a press briefing.
“Statistics have shown that there is a drastic drop in the percentage of attention being paid to other ailments not related to Covid-19,” he said.
“Truth be told, we are having more deaths from non-attendance to other diseases than even Covid-19,” he said
Nigeria still has the largest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths in West Africa.
In Africa, there are total number of 129,565 confirmed cases, 53,414 recoveries and 3,790 deaths according to Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The recovery rate and death rate in the continent is 41.23% and 2.93% respectively.
South Africa still hold the largest number for confirmed cases in Africa. The country has recorded 29,240 cases with 15,093 recoveries and 611 deaths. The country’s recovery rate and death rate is 51.62% and 2.09% respectively.
In the U.S, President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the country is severing all ties with the World Health Organization. He accused the WHO of being in “total control of China” and refusing to implement the necessary reforms as requested.
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California on Friday reported the largest number of single day increase in confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the outbreak began. The state last week began relaxing the lock down rules and reopening the beaches.
California reported 2,617 cases in 24 hours beating the the previous high number recorded on 5 May 2020. The state has over 100,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
The U.S is by far hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic globally. It is the only country with more than a million confirmed cases and over 100,000 deaths. The U.S has recorded 1,745,606 cases with 406,446 recoveries and 102,798 deaths.
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The United states has conducted more Covid-19 tests than any other country. It has done over 16 million tests, with more than 1.8 million of these tests conducted in the state of California.
California with a population of about 41 million people has conducted more than 1.8 million tests. Compare this with Nigeria that has conducted just 58,726 tests in a population of over 200 million. It simply shows that the testing in Nigeria is not close to being adequate.
In Brazil, over 26,000 new cases of Covid-19 was reported in 24 hours on Friday. The number of confirmed new cases has been increasing in the country. On average, Brazil records 1,000 daily death toll from the virus.
Brazil has the second largest number of confirmed covid-19 cases after the U.S. The country has recorded 465,166 cases with 159,259 recoveries and 27,878 deaths.
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Brazil is followed by Russia with 387,623 confirmed cases and 159,257 recoveries. However, the number of deaths in Russia has remained low at 4,374. Leaving the country’s death rate at 1.13% with recovery rate at 41.09%
In the UK, average of 8,000 new cases of Covid-19 is recorded daily. The country has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe and second largest number of confirmed cases behind Russia. Globally it is the fourth country with the largest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases. It has recorded 272,607 cases and 38,243 deaths.
Globally, there are 5,919,364 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 2,490,221 recoveries and 364,459 deaths according to John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre.
Written by;
Ifunanya Ikueze
