The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported 1,143 new infections of COVID-19 Saturday.
In a Twitter update via its verified handle, the government agency said there are now 145,664 confirmed cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus in Nigeria.
A total of 120,399 people it stated, have so far been discharged from hospital, while the number of deaths so far is 1,747.
As of Saturday, more than 108 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 60.5 million of those cases listed as recovered or resolved in a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.3 million.
The BBC reported that scientists writing in medical journal the Lancet have warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end unless poorer countries can access vaccines.
Unprecedented numbers of doses are needed, the article said, but poorer countries lack funds and richer countries have snapped up supplies.
The experts want to see production ramped up and doses priced affordably.
It is the latest warning that so-called “vaccine nationalism” is putting lives at risk.
Meanwhile, a universal vaccine that would work on all strains of coronavirus could be available within a year, researchers have said. According to a Metro report, scientists at the University of Nottingham have teamed up with UK company Scancell, which works at developing cancer vaccines, to try and create the jab. The shot would work by targeting the core of the virus instead of just the spike protein, ending the need to keep tweaking existing jabs as the virus mutates. Vaccines currently in use like the Pfizer and AstraZeneca ones target the spike protein of the virus, which is the part of the virus that latches on to human cells. Their advantage is that they are quicker to make, but their efficacy is expected to wane as the virus mutates.
