Coronavirus live The new South African variant arrives in Europe: Belgium confirms a case
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The Ministry of Health will propose in the next Council of Ministers an agreement for the restriction of flights from South Africa and Botswana, after the appearance of the new variant B.1.1.529, known as 'Nu', of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes
Covid-19
.
In line with the call made this morning by the president of the European Commission, Úrsula Von der Leyen, the Ministry has advanced the implementation of this measure, despite the fact that the
National Epidemiological Surveillance Network
(SiViEs System) has not No case of this new variant has been detected to date.
Additionally, the Ministry has advanced that it will adopt "with imminent character" a resolution of the General Directorate of Public Health to
require passengers who come from risk countries
, in addition to vaccination, a PDIA test (antigen test or PCR).
Other European countries, such as Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Austria and Croatia,
have
also
restricted travel with these two African countries
.
The announcement came hours after Britain and Israel announced travel restrictions from various southern African countries.
A woman with symptoms of coronavirus after a trip to Egypt with a stopover in Turkey is the first confirmed case in Belgium of a patient infected with the new variant 'Nu'.
The diagnosis has been confirmed by the UZ Leuven University Hospital (Leuven) after examining a young adult who was not vaccinated and who began to develop symptoms eleven days
after having made the trip to Egypt
, according to the Belgian chain RTBF.
This is the first confirmed case in Europe of this variant that is related to the countries of southern Africa, although the patient, who has a
high viral load
, does not seem to have any recent link with that region, according to the information provided by the case.
The diagnosis coincides with the European Commission's proposal to close the common border to flights with origin or
destination in the southern African region
, a measure that the Twenty-seven must still examine on the afternoon of this Friday.
In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) is going to convene a meeting of experts this Friday to evaluate the new variant.
The objective, as announced by the United Nations international health organization, is to determine whether this variant "
should be designated as a variant of interest or a variant of concern
."
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO lead epidemiologist, has pointed out that this new variant is still not widely known, as there are barely "
less than 100 complete genomic sequences available
."
In any case, he has detailed that "what is known is that this variant has a large number of mutations and the concern is that when you have so many mutations this can have an impact on how the virus behaves."
The epidemiologist has stated, however, that for the moment it is too early to know the severity of the appearance of this new strain of the virus.
"It will take a few weeks to understand what impact this variant has. There is a lot of work going on.
It is a variant that is being monitored
. We will discuss whether it will become a variant of interest or concern and, if so, we will give it a Greek name, but it is something that must be watched, "he explained.
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