The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control on Wednesday has
announced that Nigeria has now reported three cases of the Omicron variant of
the COVID-19 virus.
NigerianEye had reported a few hours ago that the centre announced
two cases of the new variant.
A statement signed by the Director-General, Dr Ifedayo
Adetifa, partly reads, “The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control conducts case
and genomic surveillance for inbound international travellers arriving in the
country at its National Reference Laboratory, Abuja and a network of other
testing laboratories. Sequencing of samples from COVID-19 positive inbound
travellers is currently conducted in laboratories with sequencing capacity in
the country and all the sequencing data are shared in publicly accessible
databases.
“This genomic surveillance has now identified and confirmed
Nigeria’s first cases of the B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, now known as the
Omicron variant. Samples obtained for the stipulated day two test for all
travellers to Nigeria were positive for this variant in three persons with a
history of travel to South Africa.
“These cases were recent arrivals in the country in the past
week. Follow up to ensure isolation, linkage to clinical care, contact tracing
and other relevant response activities have commenced. Arrangements are also
being made to notify the country where travel originated according to the
provisions of the International Health Regulations.
“The NCDC assumes
Omicron is widespread globally given the increasing number of countries
reporting this variant. Therefore, it is a matter of when, not if, we will
identify more cases. We continue to expand our sequencing capacity in-country
at the NCDC-NRL, through our network of public health laboratories and other
partners.
“Our focus is to complete sequencing of recently accrued samples
of SARS-COV-2 positive travelers from all countries, especially those from
countries that have reported the Omicron variant.”
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