Another new variant of the novel COVID-19 has reportedly emerged in Nigeria, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), John Nkengasong revealed on Thursday.
He told an online news conference from Addis Ababa, cautioning that more investigation was needed to ascertain the claim.
New variants of the virus that appear more deadly and led to travel restrictions, have been reported in Britain and South Africa.
“It’s a separate lineage from the UK and the South African lineages,” Nkengasong said.
The detection of the new variants in Nigeria and South Africa prompted an emergency meeting of the Africa CDC this week, Nkengasong said.
The news comes as cases are surging in both Nigeria and South Africa. In the past week, Nigeria reported a 52% increase in cases and South Africa a 40% increase, Nkengasong said.
Reuters further reported him as saying there was no evidence the new variant was contributing to increased transmission in Nigeria, but cautioned the country does less genomic surveillance than Britain.
The Nigeria CDC and the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases in Nigeria will study more samples, Nkengasong said.
“Give us some time … it’s still very early”, he said, in response to questions about the variant.
Nigeria’s principal COVID-19 investigator has just released publicly the genomic sequences of the new variant, he added.
Nigeria’s CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Nkengasong’s remarks.
“Over recent weeks, we’ve had a huge increase in number of samples to (the Nigerian CDC’s) reference lab,” the Nigeria CDC’s director general Chikwe Ihekweazu tweeted on Thursday.
“This has led to an unusual delay with testing, but we’re working round the clock.”
This story was originally published by Reuters here.
