Nigeria Records 197 New COVID-19 Cases, 7 Deaths

By Our Correspondent

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has confirmed 196 new cases of COVID-19 in 11 states and the federal capital territory, FCT.

This was announced just before midnight on Wednesday on the agency’s Twitter handle.

According to the breakdown, 87 were recorded in Lagos, 24 in Kano, 18 in Gombe, 17 in Kaduna, 16 in the FCT, 10 in Katsina, eight in Sokoto, seven in Edo, six in Borno, and one each in Yobe, Ebonyi and Adamawa.

As at 11:55pm on April 29, 2020, a total of 1,728 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been recorded.

Seven more fatalities were recorded, bringing the total number of deaths to 51, while 52 more persons were discharged, bringing the total number of recoveries  privacy

Speaking at the presidential task force on COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of the NCDC, urged states without cases to endeavour to improve on sample collection.

“The only way you can know whether you have this virus in the early days is to get tested. The way we talk about it, we’ve had the largest number of Lassa fever cases in Nigeria ever. We have it because we’ve become more aware, we are testing more and we are finding more. The only way we can understand the scale of COVID-19 is by testing,” he had said.

According to the NCDC situation report for April 28, 2020, a total of 12,828 samples had been tested.