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Nigerian Hospitals Struggling to Cope With Surge in Covid Cases

Nigerian Hospitals Struggling to Cope With Surge in Covid Cases

Nigerian hospitals are running out of facilities to care for more serious cases of Covid-19 after a spike in infections over the past month, a government health official said.

“We are reaching a critical level where our hospital capacity will no longer be able to cope with more serious Covid-19 cases,” Nigeria Centre for Disease Control Director-General Chikwe Ihekweazu said in a tweet on Monday. “Health workers will be forced to make tough decisions.”

Although the number of infections in Africa have paled in comparison to other regions, a spike in cases, mostly in South Africa where a new, more virulent strain of the virus was found, has raised fears the pathogen could be spreading more rapidly.

The virus has infected more than 100,000 people and killed 1,300 in Nigeria -- Africa’s most populous country -- since the onset of the pandemic, according to Nigeria’s CDC.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.