Lagos State and Federal Capital Territory are the two leaders in COVID-19 on Thursday, according to Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
This is as Nigeria has recorded 1,041 COVID-19 infections and six deaths in one day.
NCDC tweeted “On the 24th of December 2020, 1,041 new confirmed cases and 6 deaths were recorded in Nigeria.
“The 1,041 new cases are reported from 23 states- Lagos (316), FCT (210), Kaduna (83), Plateau (70), Gombe (56) Oyo (56), Katsina (47), Nasarawa (35), Kano (33), Ogun (21), Rivers (17), Niger (14), Imo (14), Delta (12), Kwara (12) Edo (12), Anambra (8), Benue (9), Taraba (4) , Ekiti (4) , Ebonyi (6), Bayelsa (1) and Sokoto (1).
On the pandemic caseloads, it stated “Till date, 81,963 cases have been confirmed, 69,651 cases have been “discharged and 1,242 deaths have been recorded in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
A multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC) activated at Level 3, continues to coordinate the national response activities,” the health agency added.
Meanwhile, another new variant of Coronavirus appears to have emerged in Nigeria, Africa’s top public health official said Thursday, but he added that further investigation was needed.
“It’s a separate lineage from the U.K. and South Africa,” the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told reporters. He said the Nigeria CDC and the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases in that country – Africa’s most populous – will be analyzing more samples.
“Give us some time. … It’s still very early,” he said.
The alert about the apparent new variant was based on two or three genetic sequences, he said, but that and South Africa’s alert late last week were enough to prompt an emergency meeting of the Africa CDC this week.
The variant was found in two patient samples collected on Aug. 3 and on Oct. 9 in Nigeria’s Osun state, according to a working research paper seen by The Associated Press.
Unlike the variant seen in the U.K., “we haven’t observed such rapid rise of the lineage in Nigeria and do not have evidence to indicate that the P681H variant is contributing to increased transmission of the virus in Nigeria. However, the relative difference in scale of genomic surveillance in Nigeria vs the U.K. may imply a reduced power to detect such changes,” the paper says.
The new variant in South Africa is now the predominant one there, Nkengasong said, as confirmed infections in the country approach 1 million. While the variant transmits quickly and viral loads are higher, it is not yet clear whether it leads to a more severe disease, he said.
“We believe this mutation will not have an effect” on the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to the continent, he said of the South Africa variant.
South Africa’s health minister late Wednesday announced an “alarming rate of spread” in that country, with more than 14,000 new cases confirmed in the past day, including more than 400 deaths. It was the largest single-day increase in cases.
The country has more than 950,000 infections and COVID-19 is “unrelenting,” Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize said.
The African continent now has more than 2.5 million confirmed cases, or 3.3% of global cases. Infections across the continent have risen 10.9% over the past four weeks, Nkengasong said, including a 52% increase in Nigeria and 40% increase in South Africa.
Nigeria now has more than 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.
For the first time since confirming sub-Saharan Africa’s first virus case in February, Nigeria is in the spotlight during this pandemic as infections surge.
“Over recent weeks, we’ve had a huge increase in number of samples to (Nigeria CDC) reference lab,” the CDC director-general Chikwe Ihekweazu tweeted on Thursday. “This has led to an unusual delay with testing, but we’re working around the clock,” with many colleagues cutting short their holidays and returning to work.
