ONE YEAR ON: Nigeria has over 65,000 more COVID-19 cases than China

Nigeria now has at least 65,000 more COVID-19 cases than China, a heavily populated country where the novel coronavirus broke out in 2019.

February 27, 2021, made it exactly a year since Nigeria recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus disease, which broke out in China in December 2019. The virus’ country of origin has however recorded a lot fewer cases than Nigeria has since the virus was brought in by an Italian visitor.

Many countries and research institutions across the world believe that China is underreporting its COVID-19 cases. As of April 7, 2020 — about 10 months ago — China had already reported 81,740 cases. Since then, China has not crossed the 90,000 mark.

In essence, China claims to have recorded about 8,000 cases in ten months. Nigeria has recorded more than that in February 2021 alone.

As of February 27, 2021, Nigeria had 155,076 cases of the novel coronavirus disease, while China — with a population of over 1.4 billion people — had reported 89,877 cases.

There have been reports that China has taken lots of steps to stop the world from realising the actual burden of the disease on the communist nation.

Data from China’s National Health Commission claims the country has recorded less than 3,000 cases in 2021. In that time, Nigeria has recorded about 70,000 cases.

DEATHS: NIGERIA DOING BETTER THAN CHINA

In a year, Nigeria has lost 1,902 people to the virus, while the same has claimed 4,636 people in China in 14 months. In percentage terms, the current death rate in China is 5.2 percent, while in Nigeria, that figure remains at 1.2 percent.

Data from the country’s Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) also shows that 85.5 percent of citizens who get the disease will recover.

In China, 94.6 percent of people who contract the novel coronavirus will recover. Nigeria has the potential to beat China’s record of 95 percent recovery, as more patients get discharged in the weeks ahead.

China currently has only 230 active COVID-19 cases, while the West African giant still has over 20,000 active cases.

Both countries have poor testing records, but China has done better than Nigeria in this regard. China has tested about 160,000,000 people — amounting to 11.4 percent of the country’s population. Nigeria is yet to test one percent of its population.

The African continent has reported over 2.8 million cases since the virus hit Egypt in February 2020. More than half of those cases are in South Africa. In that time, almost 72,000 deaths have been recorded across 54 countries that make up the region.

As far as vaccination go, China is reported to have administered  40.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines — and is only second to the United States  (70.5 million). Nigeria is yet to get a single shot.

More than 230 million doses have been administered worldwide.