World Health Organisation, (WHO), on Friday, urged Nigeria and other countries not to panic but to prepare for the likely spread of the new COVID-19 Omicron variant.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier, made this claim in Geneva, stressing that information suggests that Omicron was highly transmissible was only preliminary.
The UN health agency noted that it would take another two weeks before more is known about how transmissible and how dangerous it actually is.
He also repeated WHO advice against blanket travel bans, except for countries whose health systems were unable to withstand a surge in infections.
“It is much more preferred to prepare your country, your health system to possibly incoming cases because we can be pretty sure that this Omicron variant will spread around,” he said.
He added “This is how this virus behaves and we will not most likely be able to keep it out of individual countries.
“Let’s not get deterred right now, let us first get as much information as possible to make the correct risk assessment based on the information that we will have and then let’s move on.
“Let’s not get completely worried or confused by individual information which are all individually important, but which need to be brought together in order to assess together,” he said.
