Nairobi, Kenya (AP) – Another new strain of coronavirus appears to have emerged in Nigeria, a top African health official said on Thursday, but added that further investigations are needed.
Following the announcement of similar variants in Britain and South Africa, the epidemic could raise new epidemic alarms, leading to a quick return to international travel bans and other measures, as the world enters a major holiday season.
“It’s a different race from the UK and South Africa,” John Nekengasang, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters. He said the Nigeria CDC and the African Center for Excellence for Genomics Inf infectious Diseases – the country’s most populous in Africa – would analyze more samples.
“Give us some time … it’s still too early,” he said.
He said the warning about the new variant was clearly based on two or three genetic sequences, but he and South Africa’s warnings were enough to ask at the Africa CDC’s emergency meeting this weekend.
According to a working research paper viewed by the Associated Press, this type was found in samples of two patients collected in Aug-August and Oct-October in Nigeria’s Osun State.
Unlike the variants seen in the UK, “We have not seen such a rapid increase in descent in Nigeria and there is no evidence to show that the P681H variant is contributing to the increased transmission of the virus in Nigeria. However, the relative differences in the proportion of genomic surveillance in Nigeria vs. UK may indicate less power to detect such a change.
The news comes amid renewed infections in some parts of the African continent.
The new variant is now the mainstay in South Africa, Nekengasong said, adding that there are about 10 million confirmed infections in the country. While variants are transmitted quickly and viral loads are high, it is not yet clear whether this causes a more serious disease.
“We believe this change will have no effect,” he said of the South African type of COVID-19 vaccine deployed in the continent.
South Africa’s health minister announced the country’s “alarming rate of spread” late Wednesday, confirming more than 1,000,000 new cases in the past day, including more than 40,000 deaths. This was the largest single-day increase in the case.
There are more than 950,000 infections in the country and COVD-19 is “uninterrupted,” said Health Minister Zvelini Mkhaiz.
Now 3 in the African continent. There are more than one million confirmed cases or global.3% global cases. Infections across continents have increased by 10.9% in the last four weeks, Nekengasong said, including an increase of 52% in Nigeria and 40% in South Africa.
For the first time since sub-Saharan Africa confirmed the first case of the virus in February, Nigeria has been in the spotlight during the epidemic, with an increase in the number of infections.
“In recent weeks, we (Nigeria CDC) have significantly increased the number of reference laboratory samples,” CDC Director-General Chickwei Ihekwazu tweeted on Thursday. Cut and returned to work.
There are now more than 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Nigeria.
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