John Nkengasong from Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has confirmed that a new variant of the coronavirus has appeared to emerge in Nigeria, reported Africa News. However, he warned that more investigation was needed.
The latest discovery comes as similar variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were found in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said the new variant found in Nigeria is a separate lineage from the UK and South Africa.
He said the Nigeria CDC and the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases in that country will be analyzing more samples.
“Give us some time … it’s still very early,” the Africa CDC head said.
“The one we are seeing in Nigeria, and this is based on very limited data yet, has the 501 mutations,” Nkengasong added, referring to the variant termed 501.V2 identified in South Africa.
He said that the Nigeria CDC along with the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases in Nigeria will examine more coronavirus samples to study the newly discovered variant.
He added that the country’s main COVID-19 investigator has already publicly released the genomic sequences of the new variant.
On Thursday, the Africa CDC announced that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the African continent has reached 2,570,886. The death toll from the pandemic reached 60,882, while a total of 2,157,742 people infected with COVID-19 have recovered across the continent.
South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Ethiopia are among the most affected African countries in terms of the number of positive cases. South Africa is the worst coronavirus hit African country with more than 954,258 cases. Morocco is the second worst-hit country with 423,214 COVID-19 cases, followed by Egypt with 127,972 cases and Ethiopia with 120,989 cases.
