File: Treatment of Coronavirus victims. Photo credit: The Straits Times

By Abujah Racheal

Nigeria on Friday lost 10 more lives to COVID-19, thus bringing the number of nation’s fatalities to the virus to 2,308.

Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced this on its verified website on Saturday morning.

It also noted that the country logged in 618 additional COVID-19 infections on Friday, adding to the recent surge in infections driven by the spread of the Delta variant in the country.

The News Agency Of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 618 fresh cases reported on Friday was a drop from the 835 cases reported the previous day and that the fresh cases were reported from 15 states of the federation.

The Public Health agency noted that the number of the country’s active coronavirus infections had again risen to 18,210, an increase from  17, 210 reported on Wednesday .

The NCDC  did not indicate if majority of the known active cases were from the contagious Delta variant, or other variants of concerns to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The  Centre stated that the fresh 618 cases were reported from across 15 states of the federation.

“Lagos state reported 312, a rise from the 217 cases of the previous day Thursday, Akwa Ibom recorded 89 fresh cases, a rise from the 11 cases it reported the previous day, while Edo posted 71 cases, a rise from the 45 cases of the previous day.

“Others were; 47 in Rivers, 20 each in Ekiti and  Plateau, 15 in Delta, 13 in Kwara, 11 in the FCT, 8 in Osun, 4 in Oyo, 3 each In Ogun and Benue, 1 each in Gombe and Kaduna, respectively”, it stated.

The NCDC added that over 2.7 million samples of the virus out of the nation’s roughly 200 million population were tested, while 169,815 cases were successfully treated with 189 additional people discharged on Friday.

Meanwhile, the multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at level 2, had continued to coordinate the national response activities, the NCDC said.