Category: Health

The rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant has broken pandemic records and shuttered borders in several parts of the world, as governments and scientists scramble to understand the implications of the strain before it supersedes Delta and becomes dominant worldwide. The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the United States was ‘looking over (its) shoulder’ at the encroaching variant while battling an ongoing Delta outbreak on Wednesday, as he urged people to get vaccinated and receive booster shots to shore up the…

Recent studies on Covid-19 have revealed that the Omicron variant multiplies faster in airways, slower in the lungs of infected persons. According to a news release issued by Hong Kong University, a summary of the study showed that, compared to the earlier Delta variant, Omicron multiplies itself 70 times more quickly in tissues that line airway passages, which may facilitate person-to-person spread. However, the researchers said that in lung tissues, Omicron replicates 10 times more slowly than the original version of the coronavirus, which might contribute to less-severe illness, adding…

A new variant of Covid-19, lineage B.1.1.7 (Alpha), which has cancelled Christmas festivities in the United Kingdom, (UK), has been found in Nigeria, but after initial discovery in the UK. From a daily average of 74 cases seen in the first week of December, Nigeria’s current Covid-19 cases have shot up by 451% to an average of 408, in a bout of infections driven by the latest Omicron variant. A total of 2,859 cases were confirmed in the week ended December 12, compared with 520 in the preceding week. Nigeria…