By ABUJAH RACHEAL

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced 96 new cases of COVID-19 late on Wednesday, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 162,178.

The NCDC, which made the announcement on its official Twitter handle made no mention of any death from the disease within the past 24 hours.

“On the 24th of March, 96 new confirmed cases were recorded in Nigeria.

“Till date, 162,178 cases have been confirmed, 148,726 cases have been discharged and 2,031 deaths have been recorded in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

“The 96 new cases are reported from 15 states: Lagos (28), Yobe (20), Akwa Ibom (10), Cross River (9), Kaduna State (6), Kano State (5) and Edo (4).

Others are Oyo State (3), Plateau (3), Jigawa (2), Osun (2), Borno (1), Nasarawa (1), Rivers (1) and Sokoto State (1).”

NCDC said that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre, activated at level 3 had continued to coordinate national response activities in the country.

It noted that there were 11,421 active cases in Nigeria in the past 24 hours.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Nigeria’s daily fresh COVID-19 cases have continued to follow a downward trend from an all-time high of 2,314 on Jan. 22.

Daily new positive cases have come down to 86 as at March 21.

Meanwhile, Nigeria has tested 1,727, 467 people since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was announced on Feb. 27, 2020. (NAN)