New variant of COVID-19 discovered

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC says a new variant of COVID-19 has been discovered 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 not been described as a variant of concern yet.

At the presidential task force on COVID19 briefing in Abuja, the NCDC director general Chikwe Iheakweazu said that scientists were still looking hard to understand if the variant has any effect on the virus transmutability, immunity as well as diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.

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.