No case of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus has been detected in Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, said.
The Director-General of the health agency, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, made this known in a statement.
The Omicron variant of coronavirus was first detected in South Africa last week.
He said that the centre was giving priority to sequencing recently accrued samples from SARS-COV-2 positive travellers from all countries, especially those from countries that have reported the Omicron variant already.
It read, “The state notes that the NCDC, through the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) continues to coordinate genomic surveillance and other activities required for the detection of variants.
“A total of 126 genomes of this variant have been detected globally and published on GISAID, (GISAID is a global mechanism for sharing sequencing data).
“Given the high number of mutations present in this Omicron variant and the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases observed in South Africa, this virus is considered highly transmissible and may also present an increased risk of reinfection compared to other VOCs.
