The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has announced 340 new cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the country.
The NCDC made this known on its official twitter handle on Friday, adding that four deaths were also recorded.
The health agency said that with this new figure, Nigeria now has 51304 confirmed cases, 37885 discharged and 996 deaths.
It stated that the 340 new cases were reported from 19 states in the country.
The NCDC noted that out of the 340 new cases Kaduna recorded the highest with 63 infections, followed by FCT with 51.
States that made up Friday’s figure include Plateau-38, Lagos-33, Delta-25, Gombe-21, Adamawa-21, Edo-20, Katsina-17, Akwa Ibom-11, Ekiti-10, Rivers-9, Ondo-5, Ebonyi-4, Cross River-3, Ogun-3, Sokoto-2, Imo-2 and Nasarawa-2.
The NCDC revealed that the Federal government, in order to ramp up testing and tracing of COVID-19 cases, was considering a partnership between state governments and private firms.
Meanwhile, Modern technology and international cooperation could limit the coronavirus pandemic to less than two years, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
“Hoping we can have additional tools like a vaccine, I think we can finish it in a shorter time than the 1918 flu,” he told a news conference in Geneva, referring to the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed tens of millions of lives until 1920.
While the novel coronavirus can spread more easily because the world is far more interconnected than it was 100 years ago, modern technology has given humanity the tools to fight COVID-19 more effectively than the Spanish flu, Tedros said.
“So we hope to finish this pandemic in less than two years,” he said.