Ghana's Kotoka International Airport in Accra, the Omicron form of COVID-19 was discovered for the first time.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service,Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye who blazoned this Wednesday in Accra said the first case was discovered on Sunday, November 21, 2021, in a Nigerian rubberneck through sequencing. Another case was recorded in a rubberneck from Zimbabwe
"The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 complaint has been plant at the Kotoka International Airport,"Dr Kuma-Aboagye said at an event organised moment to advertise the launch of mass COVID-19 vaccinations in the country.
"The good thing is that in the community test done so far, we haven't seen any Omicron within the community of Ghana, but the peril is that if someone has the Omicron, and it's incubating, it'll not be plant at the field".
He added that so far, no case of the new Omicron variant has been recorded in the" community of Ghana".
Dr Kumah-Aboagye also assured that the country will strengthen its strategies at the field to help the importation of the illness.
"For Christmas, we're going to insure that to help importation, the strategies at the field which have served us a lot will continue and be strengthened to insure that people are tested before they leave and when they arrive to reduce the importation (of COVID-19),"he said.
"We're going to cover all our anchorages of entry, we're adding our surveillance across the country to insure that cases are followed up. We're also going to identify countries of concern so that indeed when they arrive and are negative, we've a different protocol on how to observe them.".
Omicron
Omicron was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by South Africa in November 2021 and early substantiation suggests it has a advancedre-infection threat.
Cases of the new variant have also been verified in several European countries, including the UK, Germany and Italy, as well as Botswana, Israel, Australia and Hong Kong.
In response, a number of countries have now banned or confined breakouts to and from South Africa and several neighbouring nations.
South Africa has complained that it's being penalized- rather of saluted-for discovering Omicron.
The South African Foreign Ministry in a statement on Saturday explosively criticised the trip bans.
"Excellent wisdom should be saluted and not penalized,"it said.
The bans were" akin to chastising South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the capability to descry new variants hastily".
The statement added that the response had been fully different when new variants were discovered away in the world.
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