The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control said that Nigeria has now reported three cases of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus.

According to the Director-General, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, in a statement said, “The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control conducts case and genomic surveillance for inbound international travellers arriving in the country at its National Reference Laboratory, Abuja and a network of other testing laboratories.

Sequencing of samples from COVID-19 positive inbound travellers is currently conducted in laboratories with sequencing capacity in the country and all the sequencing data are shared in publicly accessible databases.

“This genomic surveillance has now identified and confirmed Nigeria’s first cases of the B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, now known as the Omicron variant. Samples obtained for the stipulated day two test for all travellers to Nigeria were positive for this variant in three persons with a history of travel to South Africa.

“These cases were recent arrivals in the country in the past week. Follow up to ensure isolation, linkage to clinical care, contact tracing and other relevant response activities have commenced. Arrangements are also being made to notify the country where travel originated according to the provisions of the International Health Regulations.

“The NCDC assumes Omicron is widespread globally given the increasing number of countries reporting this variant. Therefore, it is a matter of when, not if, we will identify more cases. We continue to expand our sequencing capacity in-country at the NCDC-NRL, through our network of public health laboratories and other partners.

“Our focus is to complete sequencing of recently accrued samples of SARS-COV-2 positive travelers from all countries, especially those from countries that have reported the Omicron variant.”

NCDC also said that the country recorded 21 new COVID-19 infections across five states of the federation on Monday.

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The NCDC stated this in its daily COVID-19 report on Tuesday morning.

The 21 additional cases reported on Monday indicate a decrease from the 110 cases reported the previous day.

According to the NCDC, the additional 21 cases bring the total of confirmed infections in the country to 214,113.

It said Lagos recorded 6, Cross River-5, Rivers-5 and Abia-3.

Meanwhile, Bauchi and Kaduna recorded one case each.

The NCDC noted that since the outbreak of the virus on Feb. 27, 2020, a total of 2,976 persons had lost their lives, while 207,292 recovered and were discharged.

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The Nigerian public health institute said a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continued to coordinate the national response activities.

The agency added that a total of 3,479,682 blood samples had been tested since the pandemic began across the country.