Israel on Tuesday recorded its first case of a sub-variant of the Covid-19 Delta, which is already circulating in several European countries.
"The variant AY4.2, which has been discovered in several European countries, has been identified," the Ministry of Health said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
An 11-year-old child from Europe was a carrier of the sub-variant.
He was identified at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and has been quarantined.
No other case has since been identified, specifies the Israeli ministry.
Manage this new variant as well as possible
The emergence of this new variant, despite the very strong contagiousness of the Delta variant which tends to rule out new strains, raises fears of an even greater transmissibility.
For François Balloux, director of the Institute of Genetics at UCL in London, this new variant is still rare and does not seem to pose the same high risk of transmission as other strains.
The subvariant was discovered as Israel was considering lifting some of its restrictions, including on tourism.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Wednesday after an emergency meeting that the country would take measures "to maintain the positive results of the fight against the coronavirus" with the appearance of this variant.
The Prime Minister announced the strengthening of the epidemiological investigation on this new variant, the making of contact with the countries where this variant is present and possible changes to the entry instructions for tourists.
Israel was one of the first countries to launch a vaccination campaign in December 2020, but the spread of the Delta variant and the lifting of restrictions have encouraged the emergence of a new wave of contamination.
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