Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) revealed this at a ministerial briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated the Delta variety as a variant of concern due to its heightened transmissibility, according to report.
The variation has been found in over 90 countries so far.
While progress had been made in response to the ongoing pandemic with the fact-paced development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccines globally, Ihekweazu, who was represented by Mrs Elsie Ilori, Director of Disease Surveillance Department, CDC, while giving an update on Nigeria’s COVID-19 situation, said that variants of concern with increased transmissibility pose a threat.
“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.
“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 setting, 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 director said that the country’s test positive rate based on Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests alone grew to 3.4 percent across the country, which he highlighted was an indicator used to understand the level of virus transmission.
