Detect new strain in Nigeria, different from South Africa and UK – Telam

A new strain of coronavirus, different from those recently detected in South Africa and the United Kingdom, but which “shares certain mutations” with the latter, has been discovered in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with 200 million ‘inhabitants, reports the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (Acegid).

After the announcement, which was made this week with discretion, the African Center for Disease Control (CDC) – the African Union’s health agency – held an emergency meeting to analyze the new scenario, a published the agency this Sunday. AFP news.

But Professor Christian Happi, a molecular biologist who participated in the genetic sequencing of this new variant, asked that this discovery not be “extrapolated”, that is to say that hasty assumptions are not made.

Acegid analyzed 200 samples of the virus in early December, and two of them, taken from patients on August 3 and October 9, showed genetic mutations.

“We have no idea or certainty whether this variant is directly related to the increase in cases Nigeria is currently seeing,” the professor said.

The country had more than 82,000 cases recorded on Saturday and 1,246 deaths, figures however relatively low but the number of tests carried out in the country is insignificant.

Thanks to the genetic sequencing of the virus, a very refined screening operation that only 12 laboratories on the African continent can perform, Professor Happi and his team were able to describe the evolution of the mutation.

“We do not know where this new variant comes from. We believe that it is independent, that it is produced in Nigeria. I do not think that it is imported,” said the biologist.

Happi, a former Harvard professor specializing in infectious diseases, however recalled that “viruses mutate and change” naturally.

“The important thing is not the mutation, but the transformation of the protein tip”, the part of the virus that allows access to the cells of the body, and which would make this mutation infectious, he explained.

There has not been enough research to date and Acegid is working with the Nigerian Center for Infectious Diseases (NCDC), the national public health body, to try to explain the recent increase in Covid-19 cases. and if it could be due to new strain.

Yet one thing seems to be true: Nigeria’s relatively low death rate compared to Western countries has not increased in recent times.

“I ask people not to extrapolate. There is a tendency to extrapolate with these new variants of the virus,” said the professor. “Nothing shows us, for example, that the strain found in England would have the same effects in Nigeria” and vice versa.

“If there’s anything Covid-19 taught us, it’s that in everything we thought we knew about this virus, we were wrong,” Happi recalls.

“Some have predicted that a third of the African population will die, but we cannot apply the research and figures gathered in Europe and the United States and apply them here: we are genetically different, our immune health is different,” he insisted.

For his part, the director of the African Union CDC, Jhon Nkengasong, asked for “time” while investigating the rate of spread of the new strain in Nigeria, during a video conference from Addis Ababa.

Currently, 2.4 million cases of coronavirus have been recorded in Africa, or 3.6% of the global total, according to an AFP tally. In terms of deaths, more than 57,000 have been confirmed, less than in France (59,072), seventh in the global grid of deaths due to the disease.

The small number of diagnostic tests carried out could cast doubt on the statistics, but it is also true that no country has seen a peak in excess mortality, which would indicate a spread of the virus.