The Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said Thursday that the agency has confirmed a case of the dreaded delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the country.
This was contained in a statement from the agency on Thursday night.
According to the statement, the newly detected variant also called the B.1.617.2 lineage was confirmed after a traveler tested positive in the country.
The development followed the mandatory testing required of all international travelers and genomic sequencing at the NCDC National Reference Laboratory, in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The World Health Organization (WHO) had raised the alarm about the new variant, referring to it as the variant of concern due to its higher transmissibility.
It has been detected in at least 90 countries around the world and is still spreading to more nations.
The public health agency, in the statement, revealed that it has been working with the Nigerian Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), the African Center for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) and other laboratories within the national network to carry out the genomic sequencing.
“This is to allow the detection of worrisome variants and initiate response activities.
“All data on variants from Nigeria have been published on GISAID, a global mechanism for sharing sequencing data. Given the global risk of spread of the Delta variant, positive samples from international travelers to Nigeria are regularly sequenced, ”the statement said.
.
