By Abujah Racheal
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Saturday recorded 265 new cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 7,526.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NCDC, through its official tweeter handle, announced that 133 of the new cases were found in Lagos, 34 in Oyo, 28 in Edo, 22 in the FCT, six in Plateau, five in Kaduna, three each in Borno and Niger, and two each in Kwara, Bauchi, Anambra, and Enugu states.
The health agency said that the number of deaths had risen to 221, just as the number of successfully treated patients also increased to 2,174.
According to the NCDC, no new state has reported a case in the past 24 hours.
The agency said that as of May 23, 7,526 cases had been confirmed with 5,131 of them active.
According to the agency, 2,174 patients have been discharged while 221 deaths have been recorded in 34 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Since the confirmation of the first case of the virus in Nigeria on Feb. 27, the NCDC has released advisories and statements to help Nigerians and affected groups in particular respond to the pandemic.
On Feb. 28, a multi-sectoral Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) was activated at Level Three the highest emergency level in Nigeria led by NCDC in close coordination with the State Public Health EOCs (PHEOC).
The health agency embarked on the development of sector-specific advisories on re-opening, conducted high level technical session on strategic outputs of Mid-Action Review and identified priority activities for the next phase of the response.
The NCDC reviewed Epi-data at the national and subnational levels for targeted interventions and engaged the National Council of Women Society on the use of their expansive network for community sensitisation.
It also developed strategic plan for grassroots mobilisation and had trained 101 healthcare workers on Infection Prevention and Control in Owerri, Imo state.
The health agency further trained 25 health care workers in the military on IPC in Enugu state.
It developed and circulated the National COVID-19 mortality review forms to isolation centres.
It also completed the first phase of engagement with traditional rulers and discussed their roles in curtailing the spread of COVID-19 in their domains.
The NCDC trained surveillance and laboratory personnel from 39 Local Government Areas in Kano state on safe sample collection, packaging, handling, and transportation.
It also completed commodities distribution to Oyo State Ministry of Health, Points of Entry and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH).
NCDC developed new Key Performance Indicators to track surveillance strategic directions and programmes.
