A total of 7,153 persons have been tested across all states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory for the dreaded coronavirus as of Friday evening.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control disclosed the figure in its update on COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria for Week 16 which it published on Friday.
“As of 6 pm, April 17, 2020, 7,153 samples had been tested for COVID-19 in Nigeria.
“We are working very hard to increase the number of samples tested, including community surveillance in the FCT and Lagos,” the centre said.
According to the centre, 6,649 persons were tested as of Thursday evening.
The new figure of 7,153 indicated that 504 samples were tested on Friday alone.
According to the report, 20 states (including Abuja) have recorded confirmed cases of the virus as of the time of publishing the report.
It said the gender pattern of confirmed cases (put at 442 then) showed that more males tested positive for the virus than females.
The number of males with confirmed cases is put at 314 (71%) while that of females is 128 (29%).
Of the confirmed cases, the NCDC said 210 (48%) had travel histories; 129 (29%) were contacts; 11 (2%) were of unknown sources while 92 (21%) were “incomplete.”
The centre put the total number of cases globally at 1,991,562 and 130, 885 deaths.
According to the report, 210 countries are so far affected.
On response activities, the centre wrote, “There is an ongoing distribution of Viral Transport Medium to all the states and FCT.
“There is the deployment of COVID-19 starter packs to all tertiary institutions and Federal Medical Centres.
“We have fully set up expanded laboratory network for COVID-19 across the six geopolitical zones with 13 laboratories activated (NRL, DRL, IDH, LUTH, NIMR, ACEGID, UCH, ISTH, FETHA, AKTH and NVRI DNA and UMTH).”
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