By ABUJAH RACHEAL

Nigeria on Thursday recorded 558 new COVID-19 infections in 15 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), figures on Friday morning also showed that two new deaths from COVID-19-related complications were reported.

The centre said that Lagos State led the daily infection chart with 376.

The NCDC said that Lagos is followed by Oyo with 33, Akwa Ibom 26, the FCT 22, Imo 15, Bayelsa and Ekiti reported 13 each.

The centre also said that Kano reported 12 cases while Ogun recorded 11, Plateau 11, Delta nine, Jigawa six, Rivers four, Zamfara four, Edo two, and Ebonyi one.

“Today’s report includes zero cases from Kaduna, Nasarawa, Ondo, and Osun.

“The NCDC regrettably recorded two COVID-19-related deaths on Thursday keeping the death toll at 2, 141,” the centre said.

The agency said that 44 people have recovered and were discharged from various isolation centres in the country on Thursday.

It added that till date, 164,930 recoveries have recorded nationwide in 36 states and the FCT.

The NCDC said that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre, activated at Level II, continues to coordinate the national response activities.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NCDC reported that Nigeria has so far recorded 10 new cases of the Delta COVID-19 variant.

The Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, disclosed this at the ministerial briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja, on July 27.

NAN reports that the Delta variant is recognised by the World Health Organisation as a variant of concern, given its increased transmissibility.

The variant has so far been detected in over 90 countries.

Ihekweazu, who was represented by Mrs Elsie Ilori, Director of Disease Surveillance Department, while giving an update on Nigeria’s COVID-19 situation, said that while progress had been made in response to the ongoing pandemic with the fact-paced development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccines globally, variants of concern with increased transmissibility pose a threat.

“With sequencing efforts, we have detected 10 cases which are confirmed to be the Delta variant.

“We are working hard to ensure genomic surveillance of travellers’ samples and to scale up our genomic sequencing capacity.”

In preparation for the third wave, Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said the ministry had taken steps to urgently scale-up and enhance local oxygen capacity even before oxygen consumption increased.

He also said Nigeria had invested directly and strategically to ensuring oxygen availability to avert unforeseen incidence of oxygen insufficiency for COVID-19 patients in the country.

On COVID-19 vaccines, the minister said that Nigeria was expecting over 29 million of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

He said that the vaccine was purchased by the Government of Nigeria through the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) facility and over four million of the Moderna.

He also said that Nigeria is expecting almost 700 thousand of the AstraZeneca vaccine, through the COVAX facility from bilateral donations from the governments of the U.S. and the UK as well as Pfizer and Sinopharm from both bilateral agreements and through the COVAX facility. (NAN)

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