The Africa CDC’s top public health officials have announced Thursday that a new variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in Nigeria and appears to have emerged there.
Similar announcements were recently made in the UK and South Africa prompting several countries to readopt travel restrictions during the Christmas and New Year holiday season.
“It’s a separate lineage from the UK and South Africa,” the head of the Africa CDC John Nkengasong said. “Give us some time…it’s still very early.”
The variant concerned two or three genetic sequences and was detected in two patient samples collected separately on Aug. 3 and Oct. 9.
“We haven’t seen such a rapid rise of the lineage in Nigeria and do not have evidence to indicate that the P681H variant is contributing to increased transmission of the virus in Nigeria.”
The expert added that “however, the relative difference in scale of genomic surveillance in Nigeria vs. the UK may imply a reduced power to detect such changes.”
Nkengasong said that the South Africa variant has now become the predominant virus there as the country reaches its 1 million confirmed cases.
Despite it being quickly and highly contagious due to larger viral loads, the South Africa variant is not deadlier and will likely have no effects on the vaccination procedure in the continent.
