Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha has announced on Monday that the UK easily transmissible COVID-19 variant is in Nigeria.
According to Mustapha, there has been reported four cases of the variant called B117 strain.
“Over the last few weeks, the PTF had been closely following the rising number of infections reported daily in Nigeria and in other jurisdictions.
“Similarly, our scientists have been sequencing the variants of the virus.
“There have been reports of cases with the B117 variant strain first reported in the UK, found in Nigeria. Three of these were in travellers out of Nigeria and one in a resident,”.
“Sixty-two deaths were recorded, with case fatality ratio of 0.6 per cent; active cases stood at 23,568 at 19.4 per cent.
“All these numbers represent increases from the previous seven days and we are looking at taking further public health containment measures in local government areas that are considered high burden,” he explained.
On the activities of the PTF in managing COVID-19, the PTF chairman said: “The management of cases is gradually improving with the availability of medical oxygen. Government is also fast tracking the rehabilitation of existing plants and construction of new ones as approved by the President.
“The PTF has advanced in the deployment of resources for the national testing week and continues to review the bottlenecks affecting the turnaround time for testing.
“The PTF is improving on the International Travel Portal to minimise the challenges passengers keep encountering,” he said.