Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, ordered schools to shut indefinitely, banned concerts, carnivals and street parties and ordered certain civil servants to work from home amid a spike in new cases of COVID-19.
Lagos state Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who was isolating due to his own COVID-19 diagnosis last week, said in a statement that the tightened measures aimed to prevent another lockdown that the struggling state could ill afford.
"The complacency that crept in over the last few months ... must now give way to an abundance of vigilance," Sanwo-Olu.
On Thursday, the vice president of Africa's most populous country expressed alarm at a nationwide resurgence of the virus and said health facilities "are fast becoming overwhelmed."
Sanwo-Olu stopped short of barring in-person religious services, but said churches and mosques must follow rules that limit attendance to 50% of capacity and services to two hours.
Nigeria had 76,207 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,201 deaths as of Friday evening.
(Reporting by Libby George; Editing by Richard Chang)
