Nairobi, Kenya – Another new version of coronavirus He appears to have appeared in Nigeria, Africa’s top public health official said on Thursday, but added that further investigations were needed.
The discovery could add to a new pandemic alarm, after similar variants were announced in UK and South Africa, which leads to the rapid return of international travel restrictions and other measures, as the world enters a major holiday season.
“It is a separate line from the UK and South Africa,” John Nkengasong, head of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters. He said Nigeria CDC and the African Center of Excellence for Infectious Disease Genomics in that country – the most populous in Africa – will analyze several samples.
“Give us some time … It’s still very early,” he said.
The alert about the new apparent variant was based on two or three genetic sequences, he said, but this and the South African alert at the end of last week were enough to trigger an emergency meeting of the CDC in Africa this week. .
The variant was found in two patient samples collected on August 3 and October 9 in the state of Osun in Nigeria, according to a research paper seen by The Associated Press.
Unlike the UK variant, “we have not seen such a rapid increase in offspring in Nigeria and we have no evidence that P681H contributes to increased virus transmission in Nigeria. However, the relative difference in the Scale of genomic surveillance in Nigeria and the United Kingdom could imply a reduced power to detect such changes, “the newspaper said.
The news comes with growing infections in parts of the African continent.
The new variant in South Africa is now the predominant one there, Nkengasong said, as confirmed infections in the country are approaching 1 million. While the variant transmits quickly and the viral loads are higher, it is not yet clear whether it leads to a more severe disease, he said.
“We believe that this mutation will have no effect” on the development of COVID-19 vaccines on the continent, he said of the South African variant.
South Africa’s health minister announced an “alarming spread rate” in the country late on Wednesday, with more than 14,000 new cases confirmed last day, including more than 400 deaths. It was the largest increase in a single day of cases.
The country has more than 950,000 infections, and COVID-19 is “incessant,” said Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize.
The African continent now has over 2.5 million confirmed cases, or 3.3% of global cases. Infections on the mainland have risen 10.9 percent in the past four weeks, Nkengasong said, including a 52 percent increase in Nigeria and a 40 percent increase in South Africa.
Nigeria now has over 80,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
For the first time since the confirmation of the first virus case in sub-Saharan Africa in February, Nigeria is in the spotlight during this pandemic, as infections grow.
“In recent weeks, we have seen a huge increase in the number of samples at the Reference Laboratory (Nigeria CDC),” CDC Director General Chikwe Ihekweazu wrote on Thursday. “This has led to an unusual delay in testing, but we work non-stop,” many colleagues interrupting their vacation and returning to work.