The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has confirmed a total number of 296 new cases of COVID-19 the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus in the country.
The NCSC made the announcement Thursday night via tweet.
It said the total number of confirmed cases in Nigeria is now 53,317 with 40,726 patients discharged and 1,011 deaths recorded.
Africa has more than 1.2 million cases and more than 28,000 deaths.
As of August 27, the confirmed coronavirus death toll on the African continent stood at 28,621. There are 1,213,706 confirmed infections and 942,872 recoveries, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Africa’s top public health official said the continent has seen a 20 per cent decrease in confirmed coronavirus cases in the past week, but warned that “we shouldn’t go home celebrating that our pandemic is over.”
John Nkengasong with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters that testing and other efforts to contain the virus are largely working, but just one or two cases could reignite infections.
He said 23 of Africa’s 54 countries have reported a sustained decrease in new confirmed cases in the past couple of weeks.
The African continent has reported more than 1.2 million confirmed cases, roughly half in South Africa. More than 11 million tests for the virus have been conducted across the continent of 1.3 billion people, and Nkengasong says the new goal is an additional 20 million tests by November. Worldwide, the number of those diagnosed with COVID-19 has exceeded 24 million. According to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, the global total of confirmed coronavirus cases is now more than 24.2 million. More than 828,000 people have died, while 15.8 million have recovered.