By ABUJAH RACHEAL

Nigeria has surpassed 200,000 cases from the coronavirus pandemic 18 months after the first positive case was identified in an Italian traveller on Feb. 27, 2020, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease (NCDC).

The NCDC via its verified website on Wednesday morning said that Nigeria’s COVID-19 cases had jumped to 200,057.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that since the pandemic received global attention in early March, COVID-19 had wreaked havoc across the world, sickening millions and leaving countless patients hospitalized with life-threatening complications.

The Public Health Agency registered 519 additional COVID-19 infections on Tuesday from 14 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

It stated that the 519 additional new cases in the country represented an increase from the 387 cases reported on Monday.

“The 519 new cases are reported from 15 states – Lagos (120), Ondo (110), Rivers (74), Edo (63), FCT (58), Oyo (31), Kaduna (15), Bayelsa (11), Cross River (11), Delta (11), Kano (5), Ogun (4), Plateau (3), Adamawa (2), and Gombe (1).

“Today’s report includes: Four states with zero cases reported: Ekiti, Nasarawa, Osun and Sokoto.

“A backlog of 110 cases were reported from Ondo State on Sept. 13th (83) and 14th (27), 2021; a backlog of 5 deaths were also reported from Ondo state on Sept. 13th (2) and 14th (3), 2021,” it stated.

The agency also said that the COVID-19 pandemic killed 18 Nigerians on Tuesday, to push the tally of total fatalities in the country to 2,637.

It added that the lives lost were not affected at random, because pre-existing conditions factor so heavily into virus outcomes.

The number of the country’s active coronavirus infections, however, decreased to 8, 701 from the 10,135 reported on Tuesday, even though the agency did not indicate if majority of the known active cases were from the contagious Delta variant.

According to the NCDC, as at Tuesday, Sept. 14, Nigeria had a total of 188, 719 cases successfully treated and discharged after recovery.

The NCDC noted that over 2. 9 million samples of the virus out of the nation’s roughly 200 million population were tested, as the multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continued to coordinate the national response activities. (NAN)

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