The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported 356 new cases of COVID-19 Monday.
In a Twitter update via its verified handle, the government agency said there are now 78,790 confirmed cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus in Nigeria.
A total number of 68,483 people it said, have so far been discharged from hospital, while the number of deaths so far is 1,227, with an additional 6 people succumbing to the virus.
As of Monday, more than 77 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported around the world, with more than 43.5 million of those cases considered recovered or resolved, according to a coronavirus tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll surpassed 1.7 million on Monday.
In Africa, according to a CBC report, South Africa announced that a new variant of the COVID-19 virus is driving the country’s current resurgence of the disease, which is seeing higher numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
The new variant, known as 501.V2, is dominant among new confirmed infections in South Africa, according to health officials and scientists leading the country’s virus strategy.
“It is still very early, but at this stage, the preliminary data suggests the virus that is now dominating in the second wave is spreading faster than the first wave,” Prof. Salim Abdool Karim, chair of the government’s ministerial advisory committee, said in a briefing to journalists.
South Africa may see “many more cases” in the new wave than it experienced in the first surge of the disease, Abdool Karim said.
South Africa currently has more than 8,500 people hospitalised with COVID-19, surpassing the previous high of 8,300 recorded in August.
The country has recorded a total of 912,477 cases, including 24,539 deaths.
The US remained the hardest-hit country in the Americas, trailed by Brazil, which has seen more than 7.2 million reported cases of COVID-19 and more than 186,700 deaths.
