Nigeria on Monday recorded eight new deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, even as 565 persons tested positive for the infection.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, in an update shared on its Facebook page late Monday night, said the country’s fatality toll from the disease now stands at 2,276 from 2,260 reported a day earlier.
The disease centre said the latest figure of confirmed cases has increased Nigeria’s infection toll to 187,588 among which the active cases are 16,494.
The increasing number of the active cases from merely less than 2,000 in June has been linked to the Delta variant which has been described as the most transmissible variant of the infection.
Specifics
A breakdown of the NCDC data revealed that Lagos State reported the highest figure of 205 cases while Rivers State in the South-south came second on the log with 73 infections and Ondo State recorded 63 to rank third.
The FCT and Oyo followed with 53 cases each while Ekiti State recorded 37, with Delta and Edo states closely following with 24 and 20 cases respectively.
Benue State reported 12 cases while Bayelsa, Kwara and Osun States recorded six cases each.
Ogun State recorded five cases to take the 13th position on the chart while Adamawa State from the North-east region recorded two cases as the state with the lowest number of cases for the day.
Lagos mourns
The third wave of the pandemic is apparently taking its toll on the country’s commercial nerve centre as the state’s governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday sympathised with bereaved families.
According to the governor, since the third wave was declared, a total of 135 deaths have been recorded in the state with patients using as much as 400 cylinders of oxygen per day.
Mr Sanwo-Olu promised continued efforts to salvage the situation even as he appealed to the people to observe relevant protocols.
He, however, warned that the two state-owned oxygen plants are becoming increasingly insufficient to cater for the oxygen needs of the rising cases. He hinted at the possibility of being handed additional plants by the federal government.
Vaccination
Meanwhile, the governor said the state will, on Wednesday, resume the second phase of the vaccination campaign against the pandemic by administering the Moderna vaccine.
Mr Sanwo-Olu said of the 601,000 doses promised Lagos by the Federal Government about 299,000 doses of the Moderna vaccines had been received on August 18