Covid-19 Update; NCDC has started developing a protocol to sequence samples among positive travellers to Nigeria

As controversies continue to trail the different types of COVID-19 variants of concern globally, the Federal government has said that it is only only through sequencing can Nigeria establish if any of these variants are circulating within the local communities.

Disclosing this through the the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC , government declared thatthe real impact of the variants on vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, mortality and symptoms are yet unknown.

Variants of concernMeanwhile, in response to the variants of concern, theNCDC has started developing a protocol to sequence samples among positive travellers to Nigeria, from the UK and South Africa.

In an exclusive chat with Good Health Weekly, the Director-General of the NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, explained that scientists were working very hard to understand the variants of concern.

Explaining why the new variants are called “variants of concern”, Ihekweazu said the SARS-CoV-2 which causes the novel coronavirus disease is an RNA virus that randomly mutates all the time and has been doing so since the virus first emerged.

Ihekweazu lamented that the more virus that is circulating globally, the higher the chance of mutations arising.

“Over the last three months, a number of new variants have arisen which have had an impact on the epidemiology of the pandemic. This is why they are called variants of concern.