Today, Wednesday, the Nigerian Center for Disease Control announced the discovery of the first cases of the “Omicron” mutant, in 3 travelers coming from South Africa, noting that they arrived in the country during the past week.
However, the director of the center, Evidio Adityva, said that retrospective tests of coronavirus samples, collected in recent weeks, revealed an earlier case dating back to last October.
If confirmed, it will be the first known infection of the “Omicron” mutant, which the World Health Organization has classified as a “mutant of concern”, which means that the virus was circulating undetected for weeks before South Africa recognized it, according to what the newspaper reported. British Daily Mail.
This discovery comes just one day after the Dutch health authorities announced the discovery of a case of “Omicron” in a sample collected on November 19, 4 days before South Africa sounded the alarm about the new mutant.
However, this does not necessarily mean that the mutant appeared in Nigeria first because it is not clear how or why the sample was collected, and Aditiva did not mention any other details.
It is noteworthy that Nigeria, located in West Africa, extensively tests travelers inside as well as those coming from abroad, which means that it is likely that this case is “imported” from abroad.
It is worth noting that until now, it was assumed that the mutant appeared for the first time in South Africa, where it was discovered by South African scientists on November 23 in a sample collected from a traveler who came to it from Botswana on November 9.
The last three cases in Nigeria were all South African travelers who underwent PCR testing on the second day, with samples collected over the past week.
It is not clear when exactly the samples were collected, but Nigeria said that efforts are underway to track and isolate individuals infected with the mutation, according to the British newspaper.
Analysts had suspected that the virus was already circulating in Nigeria, after two Canadians returning from the country tested positive for the virus last week, and the couple were the first confirmed cases in Canada of the mutant Omicron.
Experts had warned at the time that Omicron might already have been widespread.
Infectious disease expert Isaac Bogosh said last week: “I think it’s fair to say that this mutant may have appeared weeks or even months ago… and by the time you start to identify it, it’s usually pretty prevalent, especially for a viral infection.” Very contagious in the respiratory tract like this mutant.”
.