By Audrey Lotechukwu
SAT, AUG 22 2020-theG&BJournal– Nigeria’s coronavirus outbreak rose 340 Friday to a new total of 51,304 with 996 deaths, as Kaduna State (63) leads 19 States reporting new cases in latest Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) infections data.
The NCDC Data shows that confirmed cases in Lagos, the epicentre of the outbreak dropped significantly to 33 from a very high of 235 on Thursday, reflecting the inconsistency in testing and tracking of new cases across the country over the past few weeks.
New cases in the FCT jumped from 44 to 51 while Plateau-38 reported the third highest number of new infections on Friday. Other States reporting new cases are Delta-25, Gombe -21, Adamawa-21, Edo-20, Katsina-17, Akwa Ibom-11, Ekiti-10, Rivers-9, Ondo-5, Ebonyi-4, Cross River-3, Ogun-3, Sokoto-2, Imo- and, Nasarawa -2.
37,885 patients have so far been discharged while active cases slowed to 12,423. The Friday samples data indicates that no new samples were received or tested.
The NCDC continues to push support for States capacity to deal with the pandemic and on Thursday concluded assessment of public health emergency operations centres (PHEOC) in five States-Lagos, Bauchi, Osun, Edo and Delta States for optimisation. It also facilitated the training, by its public health Emergency operation centre team of frontline workers in Adamawa State aiming to strengthen the State’s capacity in health emergency operations, incident management system and public health emergency operations centres activation.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the coronavirus pandemic could last for another two years and described COVID-19 as a once-in-a-century health crisis.
According to the WHO chief, ‘’globalisation allowed the virus to spread quicker than the Spanish flu did in 1918. He is also optimistic that available technology today could stop it faster if the world can pull resources together.
22 million cases have so far been confirmed globally with close to 800,000 deaths, according to the John Hopkins University data.
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