LAGOS - Lassa fever has claimed 110 lives in Nigeria since the beginning of the year, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control said Tuesday, in one of the worst outbreaks since 2016. The World Heath Organisation last week said the epidemic had reached record highs with 317 laboratory confirmed cases and 72 people dead. "Since the onset of the 2018 outbreak, there have been 110 deaths: 78 in positive-confirmed cases, 8 in probable cases and 24 in negative cases," the NCDC said in its latest report. A total of 1,121 suspected cases were reported, "353 are confirmed positive, 8 are probable, 723 are negative (not a case) and 37 are awaiting laboratory results."