INFO EUROPE 1 - New variant: strong suspicion around two travelers in Orly

Afsané Sabouhi, edited by Ugo Pascolo 5:26 pm, November 26, 2021

Cases that raise questions.

While the new variant from South Africa, called Nu, is already crystallizing fears, and Belgium has just announced a first case on its soil, it could be that this new variant is also in France.

In fact, two people returning from South Africa tested positive for the virus on Thursday evening.

A test made it possible to define that it was not the Delta variant, which is in the majority at the moment.

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"These patients are suspected of being infected with this new variant"

"Today we have two patients who were referred to us from Orly airport who are positive but who are not Delta variants", confirms at the microphone of Europe 1 Christophe Rodriguez, responsible for the sequencing platform of the Créteil Henri-Mondor hospital which is responsible for determining the nature of the variant. "We know that these patients are suspected of being infected with this new variant [South African, editor's note] and therefore they will be tested in sequencing from Monday." In the meantime, these two travelers are "taken care of to prevent them from transmitting this variant" and are therefore placed in solitary confinement. "We will say that the policy of the worst is applied." 

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A variant that could become dominant? 

The Nu variant is said to have around thirty mutations compared to the initial SARS-COv2 virus, which seem to give it an even greater potential for propagation.

It would therefore have the capacity to quickly become the dominant variant in a population.

And above all, what worries researchers is that it seems able to bypass some of our immune defenses and could therefore escape vaccines.