From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
House of Representatives, yesterday, raised concerns over the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which has been detected in some countries and charged Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to avoid a resurgence of the virus in Nigeria.
The House also mandated the Federal Ministry of Health and the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 to immediately step up monitoring of adherence to COVID-19 guidelines and all advisories aimed at curtailing the spread of the disease.
The House equally mandated the NCDC to ensure intensive observation and check on travel protocols for inbound passengers, as well as to step up the national response to control the emergence and spread of new variants of COVID-19 in the country.
These followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance moved by Dachung Musa Bagos, calling the attention of the parliament to the House to the emergence of a new variant of the COVID-19 virus.
Bagos, in his lead debate, said it is imperative for the government to step up COVID-19 measures to ensure the Omicron variant does not get into the country. Besides, he noted that Nigerians faced the risk of being denied access into other countries if the government failed to step up measures against the virus.
According to him, the United Kingdom,(UK) and other countries were already drawing up a list of possible travel restrictions.
Bagos said: “This new variant is even deadlier than the Delta variant. It is important the executive activates response mechanisms to safeguard Nigerians.
“This is also because Nigerians travel a lot and the rest of the world is also interested in what happens in Nigeria.”
In his contribution, Henry Nwawuba recalled the the House had introduced the Infectious Diseases Control Bill in 2020 to give more powers to the NCDC on how to deploy urgent response measures, in situations like this.
However, he said the bill was greeted with controversies as a lot of Nigerians misconstrued the intentions of the House in pushing for the proposed legislation..
The lawmaker, who observed Nigerians have lowered their guard on COVID-19 protocols, said the government must ensure Nigerians is not part of countries placed under travel restrictions by some countries as a result of Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Nwawuba said: “We can’t sit back and wait until Nigeria is placed on the list of countries with a travel restriction by the UK and other nations.
“In Canada today, there are three cases of Omicron traced to travellers from Nigeria.”