Nigeria's public health authorities has said that the new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, was identified in samples from three passengers travelling to the continent's most populous country from South Africa, according to AFP.

“Genomic surveillance has now identified and confirmed Nigeria's first cases of the B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 lineage, now known as the Omicron variant,” the head of Nigeria's Centre for Disease Control, Ifedayo Adetifa, said in a statement.