Breaking: Nigeria Hits 2,950 Covid-19 Cases as NCDC Yet to Achieve 1,000 Tests a Day

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has reported 148 new cases of Covid-19 in the country, bringing the total number of cases to 2,950 (May 5, 2020). This is only the second time in 6 days the country didn’t cross 200 cases per day, and just one day after it recorded its highest ever daily tally of 245.

Lagos recorded the highest number of cases for the day with 43 new cases. This is a huge reduction from76 recorded the day before and brings its total figure to 1,226 representing 41.5% of the total cases nationwide.

Kano recorded 32 new cases to finish the day with a total tally of 397. Abuja crossed 300 total cases when it added an additional 10 cases to finish the day with 307 total cases. Both states account for 23.8% of the national total.

The northwest has the highest regional representation on the daily update with 6 out of the 17 states coming from the region. The northeast has the next highest representation with 5 of the 17 states.

Debutants

With both Cross River and Kogi not appearing on today’s log, they both maintain their status as the only states without a single case of Coronavirus. As such, 34 states along with the FCT have recorded Covid-19 cases.

Testing, recoveries, deaths and active cases

Nigeria remains acutely unable to hit 1,000 tests per day as only 976 tests were carried out within the last 24 hours. While this is a slight improvement from 970 tests carried out the day, it is still largely within the same range.

This brings the total number of tests to 19,512, up from 18,536.

The NCDC recorded an impressive 64 new recoveries, bringing the total number of discharged cases to 481. This sends recovery rate rebounding to 16.3% after slumping to 14.5% just 24 hours ago.

Five new Covid-19 deaths were recorded during the day to bring the total number of deaths to 98, up from 95. This keeps the mortality rate stagnant at 3.3% for two consecutive days.

At the end of the day under review, there are 2,371 active cases. This means 80.3% of total cases in the country are still active, a considerable reduction from 81.7%.

Presently, there are more than 3.7 million COVID-19 cases around the world. More than 1.2 million of them have recovered, representing 33.2% recovery rate. With nearly 258,000 deaths, global death rate currently stands at 6.9%. There are currently more than 2.2 million active cases around the world.

Faulty testing kits in Tanzania

A video of the Tanzanian president, John Magufuli trended on social media today. In the video, the president complained that the testing kits imported for use were actually faulty and as such, were churning out more positive results than negative ones.

This was after the president reportedly submitted samples from non-human subjects to the country’s national lab. All these he did in response to the sharp rise of Covid-19 cases recorded in the country in just one month. This development has sent many Nigerians in panic, questioning the state of our own testing kits.

However, Nigeria has conducted more than 19,500 tests. Only 2,950 have come out positive and this, in fairness, can’t be said to be too many positive results, especially for a country that has restricted its testing to several criteria which include symptoms, travel history and contact tracing.