Nairobi, Kenya – Another new variant of the coronavirus It appears to have emerged in Nigeria, Africa’s top public health official said on Thursday, but added that more research was needed.
The discovery could be added to a new pandemic alarm after variants similar to Great Britain i South Africa, which leads to the rapid return of international travel restrictions and other measures just as the world enters a major holiday season.
“It is a separate lineage from the UK and South Africa,” the head of Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told reporters. He said the CDC of Nigeria and the African Center of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Diseases in this country, the most populous in Africa, will analyze more samples.
“Give us some time … It’s still very early,” he said.
The alert about the seemingly new variant was based on two or three genetic sequences, he said, but this and South Africa’s alert late last week were enough to trigger an emergency meeting of the CDC’s Africa this week.
The variant was found in two patient samples collected on August 3 and October 9 in the Osun state of Nigeria, according to research work seen by The Associated Press.
Unlike the variant seen in the UK, “we have not observed such a rapid increase in lineage in Nigeria and we have no evidence to indicate that the P681H variant contributes to increased virus transmission in Nigeria. However, the relative difference in the scale of genomic surveillance in Nigeria and the UK may involve reduced power to detect these changes, ”the document says.
The news comes when infections are on the rise again in some 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 one million. Although the variant is transmitted quickly and viral loads are higher, it is still unclear whether it leads to a more serious illness, he said.
“We believe this mutation will have no effect” on the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines on the continent, he said about the South African variant.
South Africa’s health minister on Wednesday afternoon announced an “alarming rate of spread” in the country, with more than 14,000 new cases confirmed last day, including more than 400 deaths. It was the largest one-day increase in cases.
The country has more than 950,000 infections and COVID-19 is “relentless,” Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize said.
The African continent now has more than 2.5 million confirmed cases, or 3.3% of global cases. Infections across the continent have risen 10.9% in the past four weeks, Nkengasong said, including a 52% increase in Nigeria and 40% in South Africa.
Nigeria now has more than 80,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
For the first time since the first virus case in sub-Saharan Africa was confirmed in February, Nigeria is in the spotlight during this pandemic as infections increase.
“Over the last few weeks, we have had a huge increase in the number of samples in the reference laboratory (Nigeria CDC),” CDC CEO Chikwe Ihekweazu said on Thursday. “This has led to an unusual delay with testing, but we are working all day,” with many colleagues reducing the holidays and returning to work.