As COVID-19 begins to spread increasingly in Nigeria amid fears that the third wave of the pandemic has started, there has also being a gradual spike in more deaths from the highly contagious disease.
On Friday, eight people died from COVID-19 complications in Nigeria, the biggest daily fatality record in over two months.
In a trend that started last Saturday, Nigeria reported 590 infections over the past 24 hours, health authorities said, the highest daily figure since March 4.
The new figure on Friday indicated an increase from 317 on Saturday, 404 on Tuesday, 535 on Wednesday, and 558 on Thursday which was previously highest daily records since March.
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control said on Friday night that the total number of cases in the country has risen to 173,411 with the 590 new cases recorded in 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory FCT.
In an update on its Facebook page, the NCDC said the death toll from the disease is now to 2,149 in total with eight new fatalities.
Nigeria is currently experiencing a spike in infections attributed to the highly transmissible Delta variant discovered in the country a few weeks ago.
Breakdown
A breakdown of the NCDC data showed that almost a third of the new cases on Friday were from Lagos.
The commercial city recorded 308 out of the 590 daily total. Akwa-Ibom state came second with 54 new cases while Katsina recorded 40 cases.
Oyo state in Southwest Nigeria ranked 4th on the log with 39 cases while Rivers followed with 26. Niger had 23, Gombe 16 and Ogun 15.
The FCT recorded 10 new cases alongside Nassarawa State. Delta has 9 while plateau and Bayelsa states registered five infections each.
Imo state reported four cases while Ebonyi and Jigawa recorded three infections each.
Kano recorded the lowest daily figure of one new infection on Friday.
With the recent increase in daily cases, active cases have risen to 6, 274 in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, according to the NCDC data, of the over 173, 000 new cases, 164,978 people have recovered and discharged from hospital across the country.
Nigeria has tested over 2.4 million samples out of its estimated 200million population.
As part of plans to curb further spread of the disease, the federal government has warned against mass assemblies for political activities.