Nigeria records 541 coronavirus cases

Nigeria has registered 541 new cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) as active cases continue to soar in the West African country.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which made this known via its verified website on Monday.

It said the additional infections, though declined from the 655 recorded on Saturday, raised the cumulative cases to 182,503.

The centre said that the number of known active cases was now 13,152, an increase from 12,917 reported on Saturday.

The public health agency, however, did not state the percentage of COVID-19 variants in the newly recorded infections.

It put the Delta variant seen in Nigeria at 32 as of Aug. 2, noting they were recorded in Lagos, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Oyo and the FCT.

The NCDC said it was scaling up its sequencing capacity to have a better understanding of the burden of new variants which were of concern to Nigeria.

Twelve states and the FCT were responsible for the 541 new infections with Lagos having 242, followed by Akwa Ibom, 94; Enugu, 48; Oyo, 48 and Anambra, 34.

Rivers recorded 19; Ogun, 17; Ekiti, 15; FCT, 9; Kwara, 7; Abia, 5; Delta, 2; and Niger, 1.

According to the NCDC, as of Sunday Aug. 15 no additional COVID-19-related death was reported. The total number of Nigerians who had succumbed to the virus stood at 2,219.

The NCDC said that a multi-sectoral national Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continued to coordinate the national response activities.(NAN)