Causing a wave of shock and worry among the countries across the world, the African CDC has announced the discovery of a new variant of the coronavirus in Nigeria.
With the UK and South Africa declaring the emergence of 2 separate mutant strains in their countries, the disease control department of Africa has stated the need for a deeper investigation pertaining to the strain’s appearance in the samples collected.
As the British nation’s virus variant was said to be more contagious, spreading rapidly all around the country, there doesn’t seem to be a similarity in this context between the UK one and the newly discovered Nigerian strain.
The travel restrictions making a comeback with the announcements are likely to stay for longer with more countries facing the ban as Nigeria joins the two other nations.
On Thursday, John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told the media, “It’s a separate lineage from the UK and South Africa.”
Nigeria, the most populous country of the continent, will have to undergo testing of more samples by the CDC and African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases so as to analyze the presence of the same strain in other covid positive patients, along with the characteristics that differentiate it from the older version.
“Give us some time … it’s still very early,” Nkengasong said.
The African CDC’s meeting was scheduled soon after South Africa’s alert that came in late last week, the head said adding that the Nigerian report was based on 2 or 3 genomic sequences.
According to The Associated Press who read the research paper being worked on, the mutant strain was found in 2 patients whose samples were collected on 3rd August and 9th October in Osun of Nigeria.
The paper added that the Nigerian strain has so far proved to be dissimilar from the UK one as the rapid rise of cases hasn’t been witnessed. Moreover, there isn’t any evidence to prove that P681H (the name given to the new strain) is causing the increasing cases in the country.
The point to note here is the nation isn’t as well equipped as the UK to be able to detect the “relative difference in scale of genomic surveillance”, the paper said.
The news amid reports of increasing infections in South Africa and Nigeria. The former has registered a 40% rise in cases while the latter 52%.
The head of the African CDC said the majority of the cases in South Africa, which is reaching the one million mark, are caused due to the new variant discovered there.
It has not yet been found as to whether the variant leads to more severe disease, although it is proven to spread rapidly with higher viral loads.
As far as the covid-19 vaccine’s deployment is concerned, Nkengasong said that they “believe this mutation (South African) will not have an effect”.
The health minister of the country, Zwelini Mkhize, announced an “alarming rate of spread” as SA crossed 14,000 single day cases along with over 400 fatalities. This was recorded as the highest daily increase in infections.
Nigeria has grabbed attention for the first time since the pandemic set its feet.
On Thursday, the CDC Director-General Chikwe Ihekweazu tweeted saying, “Over recent weeks, we’ve had a huge increase in the number of samples to [Nigeria CDC] reference lab.”
Currently, Nigeria reports nearly 80,000 confirmed covid-19 cases.
