ON February 28, 2020, Nigeria recorded its first case of the deadly COVID-19.
From that date to December 16 of last year, the country’s daily positive cases remained below 1,000. However, Africa’s most populous nation began to see daily cases above 1,000 from December 17 when it recorded 1,145 infections. The ICIR takes a look at how COVID-19 cases have surged to highest daily record in the last 14 days.
After recording its first over 1,000 cases on December 17, the following five days showed a decrease in the number to as low as 356 daily cases on December 21, 2020. However, the number of infections rose to 1,133 daily cases on December 23.
On December 25, the Christmas day, Nigeria recorded a total of 712 cases, a 32 percent fall from 1,041 reported the previous day.
On December 26, total number of cases increased to 829. The number of new cases rose to 832 on December 27, another increase from the previous day.
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On December 28, however, there was a sharp decrease from 832 to 397 cases, more than half of what was recorded the previous day. But cases spiked again the following day, with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announcing that 749 cases were confirmed, almost double of cases from the previous day.
8836 cases in eight days
During the end of December 2020, the number of confirmed cases increased in the nation as NCDC confirmed 1,016 cases on December 30 and 1,031 on the last day of 2020.
On the 2021 New Year day, the NCDC announced another increase in the figures as 1,074 cases were confirmed positive of the deadly virus.
However, on January 2, 2021, there was a massive decrease in the number as only 576 cases were confirmed, but the decrease was short-lived following an update from the NCDC that 917 cases were confirmed on January 3.
The increase continued on January 4 when NCDC announced that 1,204 persons tested positive for the virus.
On 5th January 1,354 persons were again confirmed positive of COVID-19 while 1,664 persons tested positive on January 6, which currently represents the highest record number of daily cases in Nigeria.
In just eight days, Nigeria recorded 8,836 positive cases. Meanwhile, it took the nation more than three months to record 8,000 cases in the early days of the pandemic.
As of the time of filing this report, Lagos State leads in the number of confirmed cases in Nigeria with 32,687 infections, followed by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with 12, 428 of positive cases.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via labolade@icirnigeria.org, on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94