Lassa Fever Death Toll Hits 110
The Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria has taken another 20 lives, with 35 others confirmed infected while 40 others await lab results in the last one week.
This is according to data in an update provided by the by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on the 18 affected states.
The 18 states are Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, FCT, Gombe, Imo, Kogi, Lagos, Nasarawa, Osun, Plateau, Rivers, and Taraba states.
The update, covering the period from February 26 to March 4, 2018, showed that 35 new confirmed cases were recorded in Edo state (19), Ondo state (five), Bauchi state (one), Ebonyi state (nine), and Plateau state (one). In that same period, seven people were confirmed dead.
Since the turn of the year till March 4, the country has recorded 1,121 cases, some of which are suspected cases.
Of these, 353 are confirmed positive, eight are probable, 723 are negative and 37 are awaiting laboratory results.
A total of 3,126 contacts have been identified from the 18 active states. 1586 are currently being followed up, 1485 have completed 21 days follow up and 21 of the 47 symptomatic contacts have tested positive in Edo(11), Ondo(7) and Ebonyi(3) states.
The report also showed that the new cases of the disease include two health workers in Ebonyi state, bringing to 16, the number of healthcare workers.
The infected workers are spread across six states: Ebonyi (9), Nasarawa (1), Kogi (1), Benue (1), Ondo (1) and Edo (3) with four deaths in Ebonyi (3) and Kogi (1).
