TheCable

Nigeria’s fatalities from COVID-19 has dropped to an average of one daily following months of continued decline.

Data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) show the country recorded only 27 deaths from coronavirus in the last four weeks — from November 8 to December 7 — translating to roughly one death daily.

The fatality figure is a sharp decline from the average of 11 deaths Nigeria was recording daily in most of June.

The country recorded its highest one-month fatality count between June 8 and July 7 — NCDC data show at least 315 people died of the coronavirus at the time, from June 8 to July 7.

1,175 DEATHS IN EIGHT MONTHS

Since the first week of April when the pandemic went into full gear in Nigeria till the first week of December, 1,175 deaths — comprising 99 percent of the total 1,181 — have been recorded from confirmed infections.

In those eight months, deaths from the virus have continued to drop since the first week of July after more than 300 fatalities were recorded in the preceding month.

The real gist though is that the infections have remained at less than 400 daily within the past three months, suggesting an improvement in the management of cases.

While one in every 32 coronavirus patients in Nigeria died in April, the situation has improved to one death per 55 cases in June, and one in 216 infections in November.

With more infections often resulting in more deaths and vice versa, a lot of factors offer insight into the trend of coronavirus fatalities, most prominently underlying illness and old age.

A massive study which focused on a pattern of 17 million coronavirus infections found, among other things, that patients 80 years and above were at least 20 times more likely to die from the virus than those in their 50s, and hundreds of times more likely to die than those aged below the age 40.

A similar trend has played out in Nigeria where a large chunk of the 1,181 deaths confirmed so far are of older people, according to the NCDC’s latest situation report.