No New Infection In Lagos As NCDC Reports 47 More COVID-19 Cases

No new infection was reported in Lagos on Thursday as Nigeria confirms 47 more cases of COVID-19 in parts of the country.

These fresh infections were reported in seven states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) disclosed this in a Facebook post on Friday morning.

While no new death was recorded, Plateau reported the highest number of infections – 16 and was followed by the FCT and Rivers where eight more cases were confirmed respectively.

Similarly, Gombe and Kaduna reported four cases each, Edo and Kano had three each, while Bauchi recorded one new infection.

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This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 214,317, out of which 207,357 people have been discharged and 2,978 deaths have been recorded.

While the NCDC said 3,969 cases are active, the agency stated that it has collected and tested a total of 3,580,510 samples since the country recorded its first case of the virus.

This comes two days after Nigerian authorities confirmed the first set of cases of a new variant of the virus – Omicron, which has forced many countries to ban flights from nations where infections of the new strain have been reported.

One of such countries is Canada which recently banned incoming travellers from Nigeria after it confirmed its first cases from two persons who arrived from the African nation.

Three cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed by the NCDC Director-General, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, following the sequencing of samples from COVID-19 positive inbound travellers conducted in laboratories with sequencing capacity in the country.

“This genomic surveillance has now identified and confirmed Nigeria’s first cases of the B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, now known as the Omicron variant,” Adetifa said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Samples obtained for the stipulated day two test for all travellers to Nigeria were positive for this variant in three persons with a history of travel to South Africa. These cases were recent arrivals in the country in the past week.”