National News

COVID-19 Third Wave: Nigeria Loses 8 Persons In 24 hours

September 13, 2021

No fewer than eight people have died in the last 24 hours as the third wave of the COVID-19 continues to take its toll on the country.

Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire disclosed this at Monday’s briefing of the Presidential Steering Committee PSC on COVID-19.

He said; “As of today, we have recorded a total of 199, 151 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 365 in the past 24hours, from 2,941,438 samples tested so far.

“We have also sadly altogether lost 2,598 persons, 8 in the past 24hrs, and a case fatality rate of 1.3%, a slight increase over the 1.2% of a few weeks ago.

“The dreaded 3rd wave of COVID-19 may appear to be leveling out, because there has been no catastrophic increases in infections and fatalities, but it is not wise to assume that the threat is gone, especially as cases are fluctuating and have to be identified by genomic sequencing.

“Evidence so far, however, is that the Delta strain is already the dominant in Nigeria. We must keep our protective measures in place and increase testing to determine our situation”, he added.

According to him, there are reports of new coronavirus mutations circulating in other countries, a development he said Nigeria shall monitor with all tools available to her to ensure appropriate response.

“We also remain on alert at Points of Entry, including land and sea borders, to confront importation of Covid-19. Several cases have been indeed been identified by Rapid Diagnostic test and taken care of accordingly.

“Regarding vaccines, all States have received doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna and J&J vaccines for the ongoing 2nd phase of the vaccination exercise in all States. The Federal Government has done due diligence to ensure vaccine quality and safety.

“The government has secured nearly 40 million doses of J&J vaccines to be arriving at a rate that NPHCDA will set, to align with their utilization strategy. We shall also surely receive donor doses, so that we do not expect to be impacted by the expected shortfall”, he added.