Chidi Samuel| Nigeria on Thursday confirmed 108 new cases of the coronavirus currently ravaging the globe.
Thursdays infections brings to 981 the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country.
In a Tweet via its verified twitter handle, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control said the new infections were recorded in Lagos, FCT, Akwa Ibom, Ogun, Gombe, Bornu, Kwara and Plateau.
The tweet read, ”108 new cases of #COVID19 have been reported;
78 in Lagos
14 in FCT
5 in Ogun
4 in Gombe
3 Borno
2 in Akwa Ibom
1 in Kwara
1 in Plateau
”As at 11:30 pm 23rd April there are 981 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria”.
Discharged: 197
Deaths: 31
The worldwide death toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 186,462 on Thursday, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
The global death toll rose by 4,576 over the past 24 hours and a total number of cases increased by 68,017 worldwide.
Britain registered the most fatalities over the 24-hour period with 616, followed by the United States with 595 and France with 516.
More than 2,675,050 declared cases have been registered in 193 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December.
Of these cases, at least 708,400 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.
…About 40 health workers already infected with coronavirus
Meanwhile, as the highly promiscuous virus continues its toxic journey across the country, health workers are not being spared as about 40 of them have tested positive for coronavirus.
Nigeria health minister, Osagie Ehanire made the disclosure at Thursday’s briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja.
He, therefore, appealed to medical workers in the frontline of the COVID-19 fight to always protect themselves while attending to infected patients.
“I urge you all to take the necessary precautions. Please do not try to treat patients without adequate PPE,” he said, referring to health workers.
“This advice is necessary due to the number of health workers who have tested positive, they are over 40 now and some others have had to be quarantined in the last two weeks due to exposure and are therefore not able to contribute to the health sector efforts.
“I urge you all to remain vigilant in the line of duty.”
The minister also attributed the high number of new COVID-19 cases to improved testing capacity.
He said, “The high number of new cases is a manifestation of improved testing but also of ongoing community transmission.”
“The NCDC laboratories have the capacity to test 1,500 samples per day in 13 laboratories per day.
“We are testing an average of 600 samples per day because that is all the samples collected and sent for testing.”
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