Breaking: NCDC Reports 245 New Covid-19 Cases as Nigeria Records One of the Poorest Recovery Rates in Africa

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has reported 245 new Covid-19 cases in the country. This brings the total confirmed cases in the country to 7,261. Recall that while it took the country 4 days to cross from 5,000 to 6,000 cases, it achieved 7,000 cases in 3 short days, between May 18 to 21.

Lagos continued its dominance on the daily update with the addition of 131 new cases. This gives the state a total of 3,224 confirmed cases representing 44.4% of total cases in the country.

Jigawa recorded the second-most cases for the day, recording 16 new cases to finish the day in 6th spot with 241 total cases. Ogun rose to 136 total confirmed cases after getting 13 new cases for the day.

Kano remained second on the overall register with a total of 883 cases even though it managed only 8 cases in the daily update. The FCT remained third with a total of 447 after recording only one new case in the day under review.

For regional representation, the Northwest had the largest representation on the daily update with 5 out of the 21 states recorded coming from that region (Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Sokoto). The Southwest (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo) and the Northeast (Borno, Bauchi, Yobe and Gombe) were both represented by 4 states.

The Southsouth (Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa) and Northcentral (Kwara, Niger and Plateau) both got 3 states in representation while the Southeast was represented by two states (Ebonyi and Anambra).

Tests, recoveries, deaths and active cases

A total of 41,907 tests have been carried out in the country so far. While there has been a marked improvement from the days when it used to be less than 1,000 cases per day, the NCDC still haven’t conducted nearly as many tests considering the population of 200 million.

Morocco, for example, has conducted 123,402 tests for a population of 36 million. Ghana has conducted 192,194 for a population of 29.7 million. South Africa has conducted more than half a million tests for its 57.7 million people.

The NCDC reported 100 new recoveries in the under review to bring the total number of discharged cases in the country to 2007. This pegs the recovery rate at an impressive 27.6%.

What is not impressive, however, is the fact that with 26.6%, Nigeria has one of the worst recovery rates in Africa. South Africa which has the highest total cases on the continent has a recovery rate of 50.2%. Algeria has 53.7%.

Morocco boasts a very impressive recovery rate of 59.6%. Guinea has 51.3%. Senegal enjoys a recovery rate of 45%, Cameroon has 41.4%, Ghana has 30% recovery rate while Egypt, is closest with 27.7%. I can assure everyone, Egypt is not good company at this time as the country currently has the highest number of deaths on the continent.

Total confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the country rose to 221 after the NCDC reported 10 new Covid-19 deaths. This leaves the country with a mortality rate of 3%.

Currently, there are 5,033 total active cases in the country. This means 69.3% of cases in the country are yet unresolved.

Africa and the world

South Africa currently leads the continent on the total number of confirmed cases with a whopping 20,125 confirmed cases in the country alone. Egypt is next with 15,786 total cases. Algeria is third with 7,918 while Morocco is fourth with 7,332.

While Nigeria is currently 5th with 7,261 cases, it isn’t hard to see that unless something is done to stem the tide of new cases, we are set to overtake Morocco in 4th and Algeria in 3rd place within the coming days.

Egypt still has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Africa with 707. Algeria has 582, South Africa has 397, Nigeria has the fourth-highest number of Covid-19 deaths on the continent with 221.

The USA continues to dominate the global scene with 1,645,094 total confirmed cases, representing 31% of the total cases in the world. 403,201 people have recovered while there have been 97,647 deaths.

In the world, there are more than 5.3 million confirmed cases. More than 2.1 million have recovered while nearly 340,000 people have died.