Yemisi Izuora
Thirteen fresh casualties have been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria; just as Nigeria on Thursday recorded 626 new cases.
The development saw the total confirmed cases in Nigeria rise to 27,110.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) made this known via its verified Twitter handle on Thursday.
In addition, the agency revealed that the 13 new deaths have taken the death toll in Nigeria to 616.
The casualties have been recorded across 35 states and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
In addition, 649 patients have also recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours.
The tally takes the total of patients who have been discharged t0 10,801.
The NCDC also disclosed that no new state reported a case in the last 24 hours. Cross River is the only state yet to report a single case of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Lagos State reported the highest number of new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. The state racked up 193 new cases while the FCT followed suit with 85 new infections.
Others are: Oyo-41, Edo-38, Kwara-34, Abia-31, Ogun-29, Ondo-28, Rivers-26, Osun-21, Akwa Ibom-18, Delta-18, Enugu-15, Kaduna-13; Plateau-11, Borno-8, Bauchi-7, Adamawa-5, Gombe-4 and Sokoto-1.
Meanwhile, the Director-General NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu; has disclosed that a team is enroute Cross River to begin COVID-19 testing.
He stressed that testing was the only pathway into understanding.
The DG said by the end of next week; all states would have capacity to test for COVID-19 with only four states away.
On the two million test target, Ihekweazu said that achieving the goal was a collective responsibility.
He said the target was birthed after the Africa CDC; in consultation with all African countries agreed to test one percent of its population.
“This is not a target for NCDC, PTF, Ministry of Health alone, it’s a target for every Nigerian.
“It is either we achieve it or we come back here to say the same thing and we will be on this journey and more people will die. This target is but an abstract or an academic. It’s something that we need to push ourselves to achieve.”