New COVID-19 Variant B125 Discovered in Nigeria, 15 Other Countries

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• Not a variant of concern yet -NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control says that a new variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Nigeria and 15 other countries.

The new strain, B.1.2.5, which is different from the highly infectious B.1.1.7 has, however, not been described as a variant of concern yet.

Disclosing this at the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing on Monday in Abuja, NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, said that researchers and scientists were still working hard to understand if the variant had any effect on the virus’ transmissibility, immunity, as well as diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.

“As we shared, a total of 54 cases with the B.1.1.7 variant strain, which is a variant of concern first described in the UK, have been detected in Nigeria.

“There is a new variant, the B.1.2.5, which we have begun to detect in Nigeria and 15 other countries. It is important to note that this variant has not been described as a variant of concern yet.

“Researchers and scientists are still working hard to understand if this variant has any effect on the virus transmissibility, immunity, as well as diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.

“This is because the variant has some similar mutations with the B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, respectively.”

The NCDC boss stated that the agency was scaling up its sequencing capacity to have a better understanding of the burden of variants of concern in the country.

He noted, “Last week, we sent another 100 samples to our colleagues at the ACEGID lab in Ede, and we did 30 sequences in our lab at NCDC.

“We will continue to scale the weekly number of samples sequenced as part of our surveillance.”

According to him, the risk of virus mutation is higher when there is high transmission of the virus.

“While sequencing is important for us to understand the situation, handwashing, physical distancing and the proper use of face masks are very important to prevent the spread of the virus,” he further stressed.

(NAN)