By Audrey Lotechukwu
THUR, 24 DEC, 2020-theGBJournal- John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (AfricaCDC) said on Thursday that another new variant of the novel coronavirus seems to have emerged in Nigeria, but suggested more investigation was needed.
“It’s a separate lineage from the UK and the South African lineages,” Nkengasong told an online news conference from Addis Ababa. He said the AfricaCDC and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will study more samples.
Nigeria has reported a total of 80,922 confirmed as at Thursday according to data from the NCDC, and recorded a total of 1,236 fatalities.
Both the United Kingdom and South Africa have reported the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that appear to be more contagious, leading to new travel restrictions and turmoil.
Meanwhile, The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 (PTF) today said Nigeria is not towing the line of most European countries to ban flights emanating from the United Kingdom or South Africa, at least for now despite fears of the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus disease which is rampantly spreading in the UK.
The PTF said it will instead be very stringent in monitoring inbound direct flights from the countries and warned that any Nigerian who fails to do the Day-7 coronavirus test will have his or her passport suspended while foreigners will have their passports revoked.
The Task Force said it will also apply penalties on persons caught presenting fake negative PCR tests for travel.
The PTF said it will publish a list of passport numbers of 100 Nigerians that will be suspended for a minimum of 6 months for violating obligation to test within 7 days of arrival in Nigeria from overseas.
The PTF said the affected individuals have been contacted and have confirmed that they failed to do the post-travel test.
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