By Abujah Racheal
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has announced 19 new positive cases of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak in the country.
NCDC disclosed this in a tweet on Tuesday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 362 in the country.
The agency said that 14 new infections were discovered in Lagos and two in FCT, while one case was recorded in each of Edo, Akwa Ibom and Kano States.
NCDC added that seven more COVID-19 patients have been discharged, raising the total number of those that have recovered from coronavirus to 99 in the country.
The agency, however, noted that Nigeria’s death toll from the disease stood at 11.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 362 cases were recorded from 19 states of the federation.
The NCDC stated that the pandemic and majority of the active cases were in a stable condition.
As at 09:20 pm April 14, Lagos has a total of 203 positive cases, while the FCT and Osun have 58 and 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19, respectively.
Others are: Ogun – nine, Edo – 16 , Oyo – 11, Bauchi – six, Kaduna – six, Akwa Ibom – six, Katsina – five, Kwara – four, Ondo – three, Delta – three, Kano – four, Enugu – two, Ekiti – two, Rivers – two, Benue – one, Niger – one, and Anambra – one.
Meanwhile, NCDC said that the body is increasing its daily COVID-19 testing capacity to 2,000 samples in Lagos and 1,000 each in the FCT and other states of the country.
NAN also reports that the testing result for COVID-19 in the country takes 12 hours to report on negative case, and a much longer period for positive cases.
NCDC said that the inhibiting factor to COVID-19 testing was not the number or capacity of the laboratories, but the ability to identify suspected cases, in line with the expanded case definition