For the second consecutive day — and the third time within one week — over 1,000 new coronavirus infections have been confirmed across Nigeria.
Confirming the positive samples on Thursday, the update for December 24 by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) showed that the new cases were recorded in 22 states and the federal capital territory.
Lagos was top of the list with 316 new cases, followed by FCT with 210, and Kaduna with 83.
The Thursday figure comes amid concerns about the effects of the recent spike in the number of new cases.
Before December 17 when the country recorded its first daily count that exceeded 1,000, Nigeria had its highest single-day total as 930.
In fact, before December, the number of new cases within a 24-hour period had never exceeded 800.
With 1,041 cases confirmed on Thursday, over 5,000 samples have been confirmed positive within the past one week.
Six persons were confirmed to have died of COVID-19 complications on Thursday, while 377 new recoveries were recorded.
Out of 81,963 cases of the virus now confirmed across the 36 states and the FCT, 69,651 recoveries and 1,242 fatalities have been recorded.
