Nigeria on Tuesday recorded 1,301 new cases of the novel coronavirus and an additional 15 more deaths, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

In a late-night tweet, the disease control agency put the total number of virus cases recorded across the country at 113,305. However, while 1,464 have succumbed to the disease, another 91,200 have been successfully treated and discharged.

Almost half of Tuesday’s new cases came from Lagos, which posted 551 new infections.

Earlier on Tuesday, Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, urged residents to consider any malaria-like symptoms experienced as COVID-19 infection unless and until proven otherwise, as cases continue to increase significantly within the state.

Other states with new cases include FCT (209), Oyo (83), Plateau (65), Kaduna (64), Enugu (61), Rivers (44), Ondo (39), Benue (37), Akwa Ibom (31), Kano (19), Delta (18), Gombe (18), Ogun (16), Edo (15), Kebbi (10), Ebonyi (9), Jigawa (4), Osun (3), Zamfara (3), Borno (1) and Nasarawa (1).

Nigeria is expected to take delivery of 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of January and the Federal Government said earlier that the country has the capacity to store up to 400,000 doses at once.

ON THE GLOBAL SCENE

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,041,289 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Tuesday.

At least 95,476,360 cases of coronavirus have been registered.

These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and excludes later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.

On Monday, 9,002 new deaths and 512,975 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 1,385, followed by Germany with 989 and the United Kingdom with 599.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 399,003 deaths from 24,079,205 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 210,299 deaths from 8,511,770 cases, India with 152,556 deaths from 10,581,837 cases, Mexico with 141,248 deaths from 1,649,502 cases, and the United Kingdom with 89,860 deaths from 3,433,494 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 177 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 154, the Czech Republic with 137, Bosnia-Herzegovina 137 and Italy 137.

Europe overall has 665,607 deaths from 30,819,585 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 552,535 deaths from 17,440,653 infections, and the United States and Canada 417,077 deaths from 24,792,150 cases.

Asia has reported 231,560 deaths from 14,683,049 cases, the Middle East 93,944 deaths from 4,423,288 cases, Africa 79,621 deaths from 3,286,098 cases, and Oceania 945 deaths from 31,543 cases.

Since the start of the pandemic, the number of tests conducted has greatly increased while testing and reporting techniques have improved, leading to a rise in reported cases.

However the number of diagnosed cases is only a part of the real total number of infections as a significant number of less serious or asymptomatic cases always remain undetected.

As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day’s tallies.