For First Time In 2021, Lagos Records No New COVID-19 Case

Lagos, however, remains the epicentre of the virus in Nigeria with over a third of the total infections.

For the first day in 2021, Lagos State recorded no new COVID-19 case or death from the virus on Friday.

This was disclosed by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in its daily update on the virus.

No reason was given for the situation in Lagos on Friday. However, in the past, some states that normally record new daily cases, such as Kano, did not record a new case on particular days because no test was carried out on those days, largely due to lack of reagents or workers protest.

Lagos, however, remains the epicentre of the virus in Nigeria with over a third of the total infections.

While Lagos recorded no new case, Nigeria on Friday recorded 1,483 new cases and five additional deaths from COVID-19 as efforts to land the first batch of vaccines in the country continue.

This is coming barely 24 hours after Nigeria recorded its highest ever daily figure of 1,964 infections to overturn the previous record of 1,664 cases reported on January 7.

The latest figure, recorded in 23 states across the country, has raised the total number of infections to 118,138.

The death tally from the COVID-19 disease in Nigeria jumped to 1,490 with the five additional deaths reported on Friday, according to an update by the NCDC Friday night.

As Nigeria continues to record more new coronavirus infections, the direct adverse impact has been more fatalities, a situation health officials blamed on late referral of patients.

Within the last six days, about 70 lives have been lost to COVID-19 complications in Nigeria after.

In the past four weeks, there have been over 200 fatalities as a result of COVID-19 complications in Nigeria.

The rise in mortality shows that the second wave of the pandemic is deadlier than the first as more patients are symptomatic and require breathing support.

While the high numbers of cases and deaths may be in part due to a marginal improvement in testing, health experts believe the relaxing of guard, weak enforcement of protocols especially in the country’s two major airports in Abuja and Lagos and massive gatherings during the Yuletide were responsible for the spike.

Active cases in Nigeria rose sharply from about 3,000 about two months ago to over 20, 000 due to a rise in new infections.

Of the over 118,000 cases so far, 93,646 patients have been discharged from hospitals after treatment.

Specifics
The 1483 new cases are reported from 23 states- Kaduna (545), FCT (235), Plateau (127), Nasarawa (80), Oyo (72), Delta (65), Rivers (64), Kano (46), Ogun (46), Bayelsa (30), Gombe (30), Abia (28), Osun (27), Edo (25), Ondo (14), Sokoto (12), Zamfara (10), Bauchi (8), Imo (5), Jigawa (4), Ekiti (4), Borno (4) and Niger (2).

Kaduna led with 545 new cases on Friday.

The Minister of State for Health, Mr Mamora, warned Nigerians against complacency in containing the COVID-19 pandemic as the much-awaited vaccines may not arrive the country as soon as expected.

So far, Nigeria has conducted over 1.2 million COVID-19 tests.

Amidst the continuous increase in the number of coronavirus cases in Nigeria, a survey has found that nearly a fifth of Nigerians still do not believe the disease is real.

The study by the research firm, SBM Intel, in all 36 states and the FCT, found that only 68.8 per cent of Nigerians believe that the virus is real.

The report said 14.4 per cent of Nigerians were not sure that COVID-19 is real, while 16.7 per cent did not believe it is real.

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