SOURCE: As­so­ci­at­ed Press

LA­GOS, Nige­ria (AP) — Nige­ria has de­tect­ed its first case of the omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant in a sam­ple it col­lect­ed in Oc­to­ber, weeks be­fore South Africa alert­ed the world about the vari­ant last week, the coun­try’s na­tion­al pub­lic health in­sti­tute said Wednes­day.

It is the first West African coun­try that has record­ed the omi­cron vari­ant since sci­en­tists in south­ern Africa de­tect­ed and re­port­ed it and adds to a list of near­ly 20 coun­tries where the vari­ant has been record­ed, trig­ger­ing trav­el bans across the world.

Ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing of pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19 among in­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el­ers has con­firmed an omi­cron case dat­ing back to Oc­to­ber, the Nige­ria Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol said in a state­ment is­sued by its di­rec­tor-gen­er­al. Nige­ria has al­so iden­ti­fied two cas­es of the omi­cron vari­ant among trav­el­ers who ar­rived from South Africa last week,

“Ret­ro­spec­tive se­quenc­ing of the pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed cas­es among trav­el­ers to Nige­ria al­so iden­ti­fied the omi­cron vari­ant among the sam­ple col­lect­ed in Oc­to­ber 2021,” Nige­ria CDC di­rec­tor-gen­er­al Dr. Ife­dayo Ade­ti­fa said.

Much re­mains un­known about the new vari­ant, in­clud­ing whether it is more con­ta­gious, as some health au­thor­i­ties sus­pect, whether it makes peo­ple more se­ri­ous­ly ill, and if it can thwart the vac­cine.

The Nige­ria CDC urged the coun­try’s states and the gen­er­al pub­lic to be on alert and called for im­proved test­ing amid con­cerns that Nige­ria’s low test­ing ca­pac­i­ty might be­come its biggest chal­lenge in the face of the new vari­ant.

Test­ing for the virus is low in many states and even in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal, Abu­ja. For in­stance, in parts of Ku­je, a sub­urb of Abu­ja, Musa Ahmed, a pub­lic health of­fi­cial, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that no one has been test­ed for the virus for weeks.

The de­tec­tion of the omi­cron vari­ant in Africa’s most pop­u­lous na­tion, with 206 mil­lion peo­ple, co­in­cides with Nige­ria’s new re­quire­ment that all fed­er­al gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees must be in­oc­u­lat­ed or present a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test re­sult done in the last 72 hours.

With the vac­cine man­date tak­ing ef­fect on Wednes­day, there were chaot­ic scenes at sev­er­al of­fices in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal as civ­il ser­vants with­out a vac­ci­na­tion card or a neg­a­tive PCR test were turned away by se­cu­ri­ty agents.

Many of the work­ers and se­cu­ri­ty agents were not wear­ing face masks.

“Gov­ern­ments should in­vest in pro­mot­ing nar­ra­tives around vac­cine safe­ty, ef­fi­ca­cy, and the broad­er pub­lic health se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions of poor vac­cines up­take,” Adewun­mi Emoruwa, lead strate­gist at Gate­field, an Abu­ja-based con­sul­tan­cy. “If pub­lic ser­vants are con­vinced about these is­sues, they are nat­u­ral­ly more ef­fec­tive ad­vo­cates to their con­stituents.”

Across Nige­ria, the news of the omi­cron vari­ant — which the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has warned pos­es “very high” risk — has trig­gered con­cerns and re­newed fears over the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

At the air­port in La­gos, Nige­ria’s largest city and eco­nom­ic hub, au­thor­i­ties in­sist­ed that trav­el­ers must wear their face masks at the coun­ters, though not much at­ten­tion is paid to many oth­ers flout­ing health pro­to­cols around the air­port premis­es and in the city.

Nige­ria — with 214,218 con­firmed in­fec­tions in­clud­ing near­ly 3,000 deaths — has up­dat­ed its trav­el ad­vi­so­ry, or­der­ing in­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el­ers to have a PCR test 48 hours be­fore em­bark­ing on their trip to the coun­try and two more tests, two days and sev­en days af­ter ar­rival. In­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals must al­so iso­late for sev­en days.

Amid glob­al con­cern over the omi­cron vari­ant, the Nige­ria CDC di­rec­tor-gen­er­al told re­porters that the coun­try re­mains at alert in the face of the emerg­ing cri­sis.

“We are work­ing very hard to en­hance on­go­ing sur­veil­lance, es­pe­cial­ly for in­bound trav­el­ers, and al­so try­ing to ramp up test­ing (in­clud­ing) at the land bor­ders,” he said.

A slew of na­tions moved to ban trav­els from many coun­tries es­pe­cial­ly south­ern African na­tions in the af­ter­math of the emer­gence of the omi­cron vari­ant. But the move has been wide­ly con­demned by many in­clud­ing South Africa Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa, who is cur­rent­ly in Nige­ria on a two-day vis­it.

Fur­ther west on the con­ti­nent, Liberia launched sur­veil­lance along its bor­ders and placed health of­fi­cers as­signed there on full alert al­though no cas­es of the omi­cron vari­ant have been re­port­ed there.

Liberia’s Health Min­is­ter Wil­helmi­na Jal­lah urged cit­i­zens to take pre­ven­tive mea­sures but not pan­ic. She urged them to take ad­van­tage of the vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign.

“You can­not go to war if you are not pre­pared for the war,” she said. “And our prepa­ra­tion for this war against COVID-19 — whether it is al­pha, delta or omi­cron — is to pro­tect our­selves by get­ting at least a jab in your arm … so we just want to raise this height­ened alert.”

AP writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Mon­rovia, Liberia con­tributed.