The Nigeria Centre
for Disease Control (NCDC) has warned that COVID-19 infections may rise during
the holiday season.
Ifedayo Adetifa, NCDC director general, in an interview
with Punch, said the expected rise may occur due to
an increase in travel.
He added that the agency, however, expects that there would
be a decrease in hospitalisation.
“We are prepared to see that there may be a bump in cases just because of the increase in travel and the number of people returning. What we may not expect to see is an increasing number of people who are sick,” he said.
Adetifa said although Omicron remains the dominant COVID strain
in Nigeria, vaccination and previous COVID-19 infections have provided some
degrees of immunity.
“Omicron took over as the dominant variant in November and
December last year, and it has refused to go anywhere. Other minor variants
have emerged, but Omicron remains the most dominant,” he said.
“The population has quite a bit of immunity due to
vaccination, previous COVID-19 infection, or repeated COVID-19 infection. So
COVID-19 is not new. The Omicron is not new like it was in November.
“If you look at our
numbers, we haven’t lost people for a while. Even if every single death is a
great disaster for people’s families or friends, it’s not anything like the
Delta variant when we had a big problem.”
According to the NCDC, Nigeria has so far recorded 266,283
COVID cases and 3,155 deaths.
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