NCDC confirms 10 cases of COVID-19 Delta Variant in Nigeria

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has disclosed that Nigeria has recorded 10 new cases of the Delta COVID-19 variant, so far.

This was contained in a statement issued by the NCDC Director-General, Dr. Chik­we Ihekweazu, at the ministerial brief­ing on COVID-19 in Abuja on Tuesday.

The variant has so far been detected in over 90 countries.

While progress had been made in response to the ongoing pandemic with the fact-paced development of diagnostic, therapeu­tic, and vaccines globally, variants of concern with increased transmissibility pose a threat, Ihekweazu noted.

“With sequencing ef­forts, we have detected 10 cases which are confirmed to be the Delta variant.

“We are working hard to ensure genomic surveil­lance of travelers’ samples and to scale up our genom­ic sequencing capacity.

Read also: COVID-19 still around in Nigeria –NCDC

“While doing this, we are scaling up our testing capability, by the rollout of rapid Diagnostic Test Kits (RTDs), in selected states nationwide.

“As we have mentioned before, we encourage con­gregate settings, such as hospitals, schools, work­places, and correctional fa­cilities, to take advantage of the WHO, approved RTDs kits to detect cases promptly,” he explained.

The NCDC boss dis­closed that the country’s test positive rate based on Polymerase Chain Re­action (PCR) test alone, the level of virus transmission increased to 3.4 per cent in the country.

“This represents a rise compared to Test Positivi­ty Rate (TPR), which was sustained for several weeks at around 1 percent in the country. In addition, last week five deaths were re­corded.

“These figures must serve as a strong warning to be even more on our guard regarding reduc­ing the risk of COVID-19 spread, especially consid­ering the more transmissi­ble Delta variants detected in the country,” he advised.

Furthermore, Ihekweazu noted that Lagos State continued to have the highest contribu­tion to the current caseload in the country.

He noted that states which have recently re­corded increases in cases include Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Oyo, and Rivers states.

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