Nigeria Records Highest Daily Increase Of COVID-19 Cases As Infections Exceed 14,000

Nigeria on Thursday recorded its highest daily increase of COVID-19 cases with 681 new infections, bringing the country’s total to 14,554.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Lagos state reported more than half of the new cases with 345 infections.

Rivers state was a distant second with 51 new cases.

Other states with new infections include Ogun (48), Gombe (47), Oyo (36), Imo (31), Delta (28), Kano (23), Bauchi (18), Edo (12), Katsina (12), Kaduna (9), Anambra (7), Jigawa (5), Kebbi (4), Ondo (4), and Nasarawa (1).

The health agency also noted that while 4,494 people have recovered from the disease, 387 have died as a result of the virus.

Nigeria remains the third most-affected country in Africa, behind South Africa and Egypt.

South Africa has reported over 50,000 cases of the virus while Egypt is inching towards the 40,000 mark.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 417,773 people worldwide since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1900 GMT on Thursday.

At least 7,436,660 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 3,308,400 are now considered recovered.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic cases or the most serious ones.

Since 1900 GMT on Wednesday, 4,809 new deaths and 132,999 new cases were recorded worldwide.

The countries with the newest deaths were Brazil with 1,274 followed by the United States with 807, and Mexico with 708.

The United States is the country that has suffered the most deaths, with 113,209 from 2,009,238 cases. At least 533,504 people have been declared recovered.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Britain with 41,279 deaths from 291,409 cases, Brazil with 39,680 deaths from 772,416 infections, Italy with 34,167 deaths from 236,142 cases, and France with 29,346 deaths from 192,364 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 83 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Britain with 61, Spain 58, Italy 57, and Sweden 48.

China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 4,634 deaths and 83,057 infections.

Europe overall has 186,208 deaths from 2,344,090 cases, the United States and Canada have 121,254 deaths from 2,106,712 infections, Latin America and the Caribbean 72,157 deaths from 1,473,331 cases, Asia 21,214 deaths from 766,832 cases, the Middle East 11,133 deaths from 521,922 cases, Africa 5,676 deaths from 215,106 cases, and Oceania 131 deaths from 8,667 cases.

As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day’s tallies.