The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said Kaduna and Oyo states have joined Lagos, the FCT and Rivers states to top the five states with the highest cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
The Director-General, NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, disclosed this Tuesday in Abuja at the Ministerial bi-weekly meeting on the update of COVID-19 response and development in the country’s health sector.
The details are also on the NCDC website, which rolled out the breakdown of infections.
It shows that Lagos state has continued to maintain the first position with a huge gap in the country, with about 102, 877, the FCT coming behind with 29, 075, Rivers state follows with about 17, 680, Kaduna with over 11,467 and Oyo State with about 10, 327, since the beginning of the pandemic in the country.
Adetifa said that from August 13 to 15, the country reported 144 additional confirmed cases.
According to him, 144 new cases were reported from nine States- Lagos (101), Abia (13), Akwa Ibom (10), the FCT (9), Kano (5), Kaduna (3), Bauchi (1), Ekiti (1) and Plateau (1)
He said that since the beginning of the pandemic in the country in February 2020, there has been over 5,441,162 samples tested, 262,748 confirmed cases, 256,518 discharged cases with 3,147 deaths.
He said that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continued to coordinate the national response activities across the country.
According to the NCDC boss, in 2021 the country had a high burden of cases compared to this year and in weeks past, some states have recorded an increase in their confirmed cases.
“Thankfully, we are at a phase in the pandemic where we can utilise COVID-19 vaccines to ensure reduction in the occurrences of severe infectious diseases and hospitalisations.
“We have this, alongside other tools in our toolkit: wearing of face masks, proper hand hygiene, proper respiratory hygiene – coughing into tissue – therapeutics to lessen symptom severity and testing,” he said.
The NCDC boss disclosed that the agency was engaging with other partners to review the implementation roadmap for enhancing COVID-19 rapid tests and self-testing.
“Work continues as usual with our teams liaising with states for disease surveillance reports, contact tracing and other activities to prevent and respond to COVID-19,” he said.
Addressing the misunderstanding regarding the wearing of facemasks in the country, he said that it was encouraged, particularly indoors and especially rooms that were not well-ventilated.
According to him, as part of surveillance efforts, “we are training community volunteers on active case search and contact tracing as well as carrying out monitoring and supervision of healthcare activities across health facilities,” he explained.
Adetifa said that globally, the COVID-19 pandemic was still exerting its effects.
“An example is that in the Phillippines, students are only now returning to school after two years.
“Current global epidemiological trends, cases and deaths must be interpreted with care since many countries have varying COVID-19 testing strategies, in turn leading to lower number of tests and thus, cases detected.
“In the US, COVID-19 boosters targeting the omicron BA.5 subvariant are being developed and due to be available in the coming weeks.
“We continue to hear of various prominent individuals contracting COVID-19 including the US President Joe Biden, his wife, and recently, Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida,” he explained.
The NCDC boss said that SARS-CoV-2 is still present in spite of desires and many actions to return to normalcy worldwide, with many countries easing restrictions to increase economic activity.
