Nigeria Has Witnessed A Decline In COVID-19 Fatalities – FG

The Federal Government has come out to announce a decline in the Covid-19 case fatalities in Nigeria.

FG, however, revealed that Nigeria’s death figure recently crossed the unenviable record of 1,000 fatalities.

According to the chairman of the Presidential Taskforce PTF on Covid-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapha, state governments must ramp up Covid-19 testing because the current sample collection is still low.

He added that the PTF will keep studying the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) even if it has been on a steady decline over the last few months.

His words, “Last week Thursday, we informed you that Nigeria had crossed the 50,000 mark of confirmed cases. Yesterday Sunday, 23rd August, we reached the unenviable record of 1,000 fatalities. We wish to restate that these records are not just numbers as they vividly remind us of the dangers that we still face. May the souls of all those that have lost the battle against COVID-19 rest in peace.”

“The PTF has however continued to study the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and we note that it has been on a steady decline over the last few months.​April 30: 3%​May 31: 2.8%​June 30: 2.3%​July 31: 2.0%​Aug 22: 1.92%

“We are however convinced that our sample collection is still low. We, therefore, encourage States to ramp up their testing and to declare correct results because early detection will ultimately translate to treatment and ultimately levelling of the curve.”

What do you think?

Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that can be mild, such as some cases of the common cold (among other possible causes, predominantly rhinoviruses), and others that can be lethal, such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Symptoms in other species vary: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.

Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria. They are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome and a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. The genome size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 27 to 34 kilobases, the largest among known RNA viruses. The name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “halo”, which refers to the characteristic appearance reminiscent of a crown or a solar corona around the virions (virus particles) when viewed under two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy, due to the surface covering in club-shaped protein spikes.

Human coronaviruses were first discovered in the late 1960s. The earliest ones discovered were an infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two in human patients with the common cold (later named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43). Other members of this family have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 (formerly known as 2019-nCoV) in 2019. Most of these have involved serious respiratory tract infections.