NIGERIA RISK TRAVEL BAN AS CANADA DETECTS NIGERIA-LINK CASES

Medical experts have advised that Nigeria may risk travel bans with Canada’s detection of Omicron variant of COVID-19 in two travellers from Nigeria. This was revealed on Monday by Virologists and the Chairman of the Expert Review Committee on COVID-19, Oyewale Tomori, in separate interviews, lamenting that the variant of the virus in Nigeria was detected in Canada.

Tomori criticized the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control for its failure to coordinate genomic sequencing of samples of coronavirus obtained from laboratories across the country. Even though there are laboratories in Nigeria which could do the genomic sequencing of coronavirus, however, the NCDC has chosen to bypass and take the samples to South Africa.

The Omicron variant was first discovered in South Africa and was later detected in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Malawi, United Kingdom, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Belgium and Hong Kong.