{"id":2402,"date":"2021-12-03T10:36:16","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T10:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2021-12-03T10:36:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T10:36:25","slug":"nigeria-considers-response-strategy-to-new-covid-variant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/nigeria-considers-response-strategy-to-new-covid-variant\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria Considers Response Strategy to New COVID Variant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The recent discovery of a new COVID-19 variant, known as the Omicron variant has prompted governments around the world to contemplate possible implications of the new variant while putting measures in place to protect citizens. Nigeria is not left out as the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 30<sup>th<\/sup> November, mandated its ad-hoc Committee on COVID-19 to meet with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to discuss the Federal Government\u2019s response strategy. Meanwhile, Nigeria confirmed its first cases of the Omicron variant on Wednesday, December 1. According to a statement by the Director General of the NCDC, Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa the variant was discovered in the samples of three passengers with a history of travel to South Africa \u2013 two who arrived Nigeria last week and one who came into Nigeria in October 2021. As at 30<sup>th<\/sup> November, Nigeria has recorded a total of 214,218 COVID-19 infections and 2,977 deaths.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Initial reports stated that the Omicron\nvariant was first discovered in Botswana. This has however been contradicted\nwith reports of an earlier discovery in the Netherlands. The World Health\nOrganisation (WHO) reports that at least 20 countries around the world \u2013 in\nEurope, Africa and North America have reported cases of the new variant. Its rate\nof transmissibility, fatality and response to available vaccines, are still the\nsubject of ongoing medical research. While several countries have confirmed\ncases of the new variant, others have imposed travel restrictions on passengers\nfrom Southern African countries to prevent infections. Canada has just\nannounced travel bans for Nigeria, Egypt and Malawi. There is worry which is\nwidely expressed in the African continent that the Omicron variant has provided\nan excuse for Western countries to shut out Africa. South African President,\nCyril Ramaphosa described the travel ban on South Africa as discriminating and\ncalled for its lifting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent discovery of a new COVID-19 variant, known as the Omicron variant has prompted governments around the world to contemplate possible implications of the new variant while putting measures in place to protect citizens. Nigeria is not left out as the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 30th November, mandated its ad-hoc Committee on COVID-19 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[441],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nigeria-considers-response-strategy-to-new-covid-variant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}