Nigeria's daily Covid infections have jumped more than fivefold over the past week following the discovery of the omicron variant in the country of 200 million people.
The average number of Nigerians who tested positive for the pathogen has risen to 451 a day for the week ending Dec. 12, compared with 76 in the preceding week, according to data from the National Center for Disease Control.
The commercial hub of Lagos remains the epicenter of the illness in the nation, accounting for more than half of daily recorded infections. The state's governor has warned of the beginning of the fourth wave of Covid cases after positivity rate jumped to 6% from 0.1% in the middle of November, he said in an emailed statement on Dec. 7.
Nigeria announced the discovery of its first cases of the omicron variant on Dec. 1. in three travelers from South Africa. The NCDC says it has only found a total of six cases of the variant though both the U.K and Canada have linked some of the cases found in their countries to travelers from Nigeria. The West African nation carries out little sequencing that would help it identify the variant.
Africa's most populous country has fully vaccinated just 1.9% of its people, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 26.1% in South Africa and 70% in the U.K. Testing is also limited in the country with just 3.63 million tests carried out, compared with 20.24 million tests in South Africa, which has a population of 60 million people.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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