Nigeria has recorded 258 Lassa fever deaths so far in 2026, with the case fatality rate rising to 24 per cent, according to the latest situation report from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report, which covers epidemiological week 35 from 24 to 30 August, put confirmed cases for the year at 1,074 across 24 states. Eighteen new infections were logged during the week, reported in Ondo, Edo and Bauchi, down from 21 the previous week.
The headline figure is not the raw death count but what it represents. A fatality rate of 24 per cent means roughly one in every four people whose infection was confirmed did not survive. The NCDC said this was well above the 18.6 per cent recorded over the same stretch of 2025, when 162 deaths had been reported. In plain terms, more Nigerians are dying from a disease that fewer people, proportionally, are catching.
That gap between falling weekly cases and a rising death rate has run through the whole year. The agency has reported CFR figures moving between roughly 21 and 26 per cent across successive weeks since February, consistently higher than the 2025 range. The 258 deaths at week 35 follow 252 at week 33 and 229 at week 28, a steady climb even as new confirmed cases fluctuated rather than surged.
The burden remains heavily concentrated. The NCDC said 86 per cent of all confirmed cases this year came from just five states. Ondo accounted for 34 per cent, followed by Bauchi with 24 per cent, Taraba with 12 per cent, Edo with 10 per cent and Benue with six per cent. This clustering has held for months, which points to entrenched transmission in specific communities rather than a spreading national wave.
On who is being infected, the agency said the most affected group is people aged 21 to 30. Confirmed cases ranged from age one to 93, with a median age of 30, and a male-to-female ratio of 1 to 0.9. In other words, the disease is hitting working-age adults hardest, and men and women in almost equal measure.
The NCDC recorded 7,785 suspected cases for the year, up from 7,375 over the same period in 2025. It said no new healthcare worker infection was reported in week 35, though 54 health workers have been affected cumulatively this year. Thirteen patients were being managed at treatment centres during the week, bringing the year’s total treated at such centres to 816.
The agency was direct about why so many patients die. It pointed to late presentation, poor health-seeking behaviour and the high cost of treatment and clinical management as leading factors. It also listed weak environmental sanitation, low awareness in high-burden communities and healthcare worker infections among the challenges facing the response.
Those reasons are worth pausing on, because they explain the paradox in the numbers. Lassa fever is treatable, and outcomes improve sharply when patients reach care early and receive antiviral treatment in good time. When people arrive at hospital late, often after the disease has advanced, or avoid formal care because they cannot afford it, the fatality rate rises regardless of how many people are infected. A 24 per cent CFR is, in part, a measure of how late and how poorly many patients are reaching the health system.
Lassa fever is a viral haemorrhagic illness spread mainly through contact with food or household items contaminated by the urine or droppings of infected rats. It is endemic in Nigeria, with cases every year, typically peaking in the dry season between roughly December and April before easing. That seasonal pattern is part of why weekly case numbers have been lower in recent months, even as the cumulative death toll has continued to grow.
The NCDC said it had kept up surveillance, case management, infection prevention and control, contact tracing and community engagement in the affected states. National Rapid Response Teams have been deployed to seven high-burden states, and personal protective equipment and other supplies distributed to health facilities. The agency also said it had developed a 30-day Healthcare Worker Protection Plan for Lassa fever, with support from the World Health Organisation and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aimed at cutting infections among frontline workers.
It urged states to sustain community engagement through the year and to strengthen their ability to prevent, detect and respond quickly to outbreaks, alongside better environmental sanitation and public awareness in the worst-hit areas. Healthcare workers, the agency advised, should keep a high index of suspicion for the disease, refer and treat promptly, and hold strictly to infection prevention procedures.
What the report does not settle is whether the fatality rate will ease as the year runs down, or why outcomes have worsened so consistently against 2025. Those answers will depend on data from the coming weeks and on how far the interventions now in place reach patients before it is too late.