The national ministry of health has trashed the rumours doing circles on social media and some local media houses that the country had confirmed cases of COVID-19 Omicron variant.
Mabior Kiir, the Chief of Planning and Information for the Ministry of Health, clarified that the country was yet to determine whether the dreaded variant had found its way to the borders.
“It is false information. South Sudan has not recorded [a case of] omicron (variant). We have our samples that were sent to Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) last week and the [results] are yet to be out so that information is kindly disregarded.
“We don’t need to encourage wrong information circulating in social media,” Kiir said.
He cautioned that such pieces of information can only come from the Department of Planning and Information for Public Health Emergency Operation Centre, adding that any information not from their ranks is misleading.
“The current information we have is only the upsurge of the COVID-19 cases in the country and what we had before was the Delta variant no Omicron,” he added.
Measures reviewed
Last week, on December 21, 2021, the Vice President of Service Cluster, Hussein Abdulbagi, who is the head of the National COVID-19 Taskforce announced a partial lockdown due to the cases of the virus’s upsurge in the country
Abdelbagi stated that the initiative was timely given that the whole world is experiencing the fourth wave of the virus as had been announced by the World Health Organization (WHO). The emergence of the Omicron variant had equally complicated the fight against the disease.
“The recent increase in the number of positive cases coupled with the announcement of the fourth wave by the World Health Organization, the National Taskforce on Coronavirus pandemic is hereby issuing the public order number 16, 2021 dated 21st December 2021, to effect the parcel lockdown measures which will remain in force until 10th January 2022” partially read the statement that was issued on Tuesday last week.
Variant detected
Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa in early November by the National Institute of Communicable Disease. The variant was believed to have a very unusual constellation of mutations.
The new variant is spreading at unprecedented speed and has already been detected in 106 countries, the WHO said.
Besides South Africa, the virus was also detected in places such as Botswana, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Australia and the UK.
According to CDC Africa, by November 25, 2021, the B.1.1.529 variant had been detected in 77 samples collected between November 12 to November 20 from Gauteng province in South Africa, four samples from Botswana and one sample in Hong Kong.
Some mutations have been detected in previous variants, such as Alpha and Delta, and have been associated with increased transmissibility and immune evasion.
Africa CDC has also strongly recommended the implementation of public health and social measures (PHSM), including mask-wearing, physical distancing and handwashing, as crucial to limit the transmission of COVID-19 regardless of the emergence of new COVID-19 variants.