Premier League clubs fear another shutdown.

 

Will Premier League be suspended again? Clubs are fearing the season could be suspended due the rapid spread of Omicron, allied with the lack of progress that has been made in vaccinating players. A total of 42 cases were confirmed on Monday evening – the most recorded in a single week- with five clubs affected by outbreaks. Tottenham's game against Brighton, scheduled to take place last Sunday, was postponed, while Manchester United’s fixture at Brentford, due to take place this evening, has been called off.
Reports have it that many players who want to receive a booster jab, which offers protection against the new variant, have been left frustrated in their attempts to get vaccinated. Wolves are said to be the only club so far to have met Boris Johnson’s target of having all over-18s boosted by the end of the month, although Leeds and Brentford are on course to meet that requirement. The Premier League remain adamant that with the current testing procedures and protocol in place, a pause in proceedings, like the one which interrupted the 2019/20 season, won’t be necessary.

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Nigeria joined the growing number of countries that have recorded cases of the Omicron variant also known as B.1.1.529 lineage, confirming the discovery of three additional Omicron variant cases. The Director-General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Ifedayo Adetifa who disclosed this noted that the new cases were detected in persons with recent travel history to South Africa in November. The news rapidly went viral as Nigerians feared the worst. It was the second time that emergence of a potentially deadly variant of the COVID-19 virus was being confirmed in the country. The first time was in June when the highly contagious Delta variant was first detected. Once again Nigeria is in the eye of the COVID-19 pandemic just as it was precisely a year ago, at the peak of the pandemic when the number of new cases spiked around the yuletide. The discovery of Omicron variant only adds a new alarm in the pandemic. The question is will the Nigerian Government be able to handle the emergence of the new variant of the virus? Judging by the poor state of the Nigerian healthcare system.