The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, mandated the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to step up the national response to control the emergence and spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in order to spare Nigeria the full brunt of the third wave of the pandemic.
The House in addition mandated the NCDC to ensure intensive observation and check on travel protocols for inbound passengers while the Federal Ministry of Health was directed to mandate the COVID-19 Task Force to immediately activate strategies to be implemented in monitoring adherence to COVID-19 guidelines and ensure residents continue to comply with all advisories aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus.
These resolutions followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance concerning the emergence of the new variant of the virus moved by Hon Dachung Bagos (PDP – Plateau)
The House noted that on November 26, 2021, a new, heavily mutated COVID-19 variant named Omicron was discovered in South Africa and had spread across the globe on Sunday.
The House said it was also aware that on November 26, 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated it a variant of concern on the advice of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE).
This decision, the House said, was based on the evidence presented to the TAG-VE that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on how it behaves, for example, on how easily it spreads or the severity of illness it causes. The House said it was further aware that researchers in South Africa and around the world are conducting studies to better understand many aspects of Omicron and will continue to share the findings of these studies as they become available.
It was concerned that Canada said on Sunday it has detected its first cases of the new Omicron strain of COVID in two people who had travelled recently to Nigeria.
It was also concerned that a total of 126 genomes of this variant have been detected globally and published on GISAID, a global mechanism for sharing sequencing data, and there seem to be a high number of mutations present in the Omicron variant and the exponential rise suggesting the virus to be highly transmissible and may also present an increased risk of reinfection compared to other variants of concern (VOC).
While moving the motion, Bagos said: “We all know how industrious Nigerians are. Nigerians travel a lot. Nigerians are found everywhere and at the time, because of how interested, the world is in what is happening in Nigeria, it has become very necessary for Nigeria to activate its response to look into the issue of Omicron, which is a new variant that is very deadly.
“A new variant that has shown that it is very stubborn as which mutates even faster the Delta variant and because of our population Mr Speaker, it is very important for us as parliament to ensure that the executive activates response to curtail the spread of Omicron in Nigeria to be able to safeguard our people and especially Nigerians that travel for businesses in and out, to give them guide and at the same time to know how to conduct themselves when they come back into the country and even when travelling to other countries.”
Supporting the motion, Hon Henry Nwawuba, said it was necessary to raise the consciousness of Nigerians on the Omicron variant of COVID-19 which has led to travel restrictions being placed on some countries in the southern part of Africa.
According to him, “This House would remember that in April last year, this House moved for the Bill for the control of infectious diseases. At the time there was an outcry saying that the bill was Draconian, that the House was overstepping its bounds and that we were giving too much powers to the NCDC. Mr Speaker, all those things that we proposed in the infectious diseases control bill that led to the outcry have happened in the world today.
“Today in this world, we have travel restrictions, we have vaccine mandates, we have mask mandates and everything that we did is playing out today. The truth about COVID 19 is that we have to be proactive. We cannot just sit back and wait until Nigeria is placed among the countries on that list.
“If you recall, when we started our legislative agenda, we had thought that we would increase the budget to the health sector by at least five per cent. In 2021 we are happy to say that we smashed those records. We increased the budget to the health sector by 72 per cent.
“So Nigerians are asking, we are asking how these monies are implemented and discharged at the bottom of the pyramid. How much of that is going towards the fight against COVID 19?”
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Omicron variant: Reps urge NCDC to step up COVID-19 national response
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