Nigeria health officials recorded more than 800 new daily COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours as the Omicron variant continues to spread rapidly around the world.

The nation confirmed 859 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday and 2 new deaths, according to data from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC.

Nigeria’s active COVID-19 cases increased significantly to 22,586   from 21,989 it was the previous day.

The latest figure which was recorded in 12 states and the Federal Capital Territory represents a decrease from the previous day when Nigeria reported 1,547 cases.

Lagos, the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria, has reported over half of the confirmed infections on Monday with 555 cases recorded in the last 24 hours.

The breakdown of the newly confirmed cases as follows: Lagos-555, FCT-57, Rivers-44, Plateau-43, Edo-1, Ondo-34, Kwara-23, Kano-18, Ogun-16, Enugu-11, Oyo-6, Delta-5, Bauchi-3 and Bayelsa-3.

NCDC noted that four states; Anambra, Ekiti, Osun, and Sokoto reported zero cases on Monday.

It further stated that 43 cases reported in Plateau State are for 27th (17) and 23rd (26) December 2021.

Nigeria also recorded 2 new deaths on Monday, raising the total death tally in the nation to 3,024.

Meanwhile, the nation deemed 220 more cases of the disease to be resolved as of Monday, this pushed Nigeria’s number of recovered patients up to 212,770.

Today's report brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Nigeria to 238,420, including deaths and recoveries.

Nigeria has tested about 3,823,309 samples for the coronavirus (COVID-19) as of December 27, 2021. The number of people infected with the virus was growing across the West African country.