COVID-19: Nine Infections Recorded In Three Days
Ever since the 18th of April, when Nigeria had announced that there were 22 new infections, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), this Thursday, said only nine additional COVID-19 infections have been recorded within the last three days. These new infections, the NCDC noted, were reported by both the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Lagos State, the country’s epicentre of the pandemic. This new development can be seen a sign of relief for Nigeria as the pandemic has reclaimed more than 3,000 lives in the country out of more than five million global deaths.
The disease centre, in the new statistics, which was released Thursday morning, revealed that the FCT and Lagos State recorded six and three infections respectively. The newly confirmed cases raised the country’s infection toll to 255,679 from 255,670 reported on April 18. With no fatalities recorded, the disease control centre noted that the death toll remains at 3,143 cases, adding that the latest infections make up the data for April 19 and 20, 2022.
Although, a total of 249,886 people have been discharged nationwide, the data posted on the NCDC website shows that 2,653 people are still down with the infection nationwide. The NCDC also mentioned that six states: Delta, Kaduna, Kano, Plateau, Rivers, and Sokoto had reported that they recorded no cases within the two days quoted. Despite the fact that the number of infections has been fluctuating, the Presidential Steering Committee(PSC) is considering the relaxation of the facemask protocol.
Read Also:
In March, Muktar Muhammed, the PSC’s head of the technical secretariat, said that the decision on the final relaxation of COVID-19 measures will be taken after the Easter celebration. Meanwhile, the PSC has also announced that fully vaccinated travelers coming into Nigeria will no longer be required to take a pre-departure PCR COVID-19 test. The PSC’s chairman, who also doubles as the secretary to the government of the federation, Boss Mustapha, while announcing the revision of the international travel protocols, said that passengers who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated were still expected to take the COVID-19 PCR test 48 hours before departure or do a Day 2 and day 7 test upon arrival.
Two days after the announcement, it had been reported that travelers who arrived in Abuja were still made to pay for a post-arrival PCR test or a Rapid Antigen Test. According to the Reuters COVID-19 vaccination tracker, Nigeria has already administered at least 33,932,163 doses of COVID vaccines so far.
Faisal Shuaib, the executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), has recently confirmed in Abuja that more than 13 million eligible persons in Nigeria have been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus and 23 million others have already received their first dose.
“As of today the 11th of April 2022, we have fully vaccinated 13,588,718 persons which are approximately 12.2 per cent of our total eligible population. Meanwhile 23,012,700 others have received their first dose which represents 18 per cent of the total eligible population.”
