Kenzo Tribouillard
The omicron variant of the coronavirus was already in the Netherlands a week before South Africa reported the new variant to the World Health Organization, according to a Dutch fitness agency.
The variant recently known in new tests of samples taken on November 19 and 23, the National Institute of Public Health and Environment, or RIVM, announced Tuesday.
Revelations about the variant’s lifestyles in Europe before it was reported in Africa put a new spin on questions about the variant’s origin and provenance, and whether bans in South Africa and its neighbors are an appropriate reaction to the variant.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his country is being punished for detecting the variant and informing global fitness authorities.
“You don’t seek to involve a virus by encroancing bans in an unethical and indiscriminate way,” Ramaphosa said Tuesday, adding that measures like testing all travelers are the equipment to combat the pandemic.
South Africa sounded the alarm about the heavily mutated variant, B. 1. 1. 529, on November 24. Two days later, the WHO classified it as a variant of fear and named it omicron.
The World Health Agency says the variant poses a “very high” threat because its mutations can help it spread more smoothly and in all likelihood infect other people who might otherwise be considered immune to past variants.
The Netherlands had in the past reported more than a dozen cases of COVID-19 from OMICRON, tests detected at an Amsterdam airport on November 26, when another 624 people arrived in the country from South Africa.
The Dutch government tested the older samples after initial PCR tests revealed abnormalities in the coronavirus spike protein: The omicron variant has 26 to 32 mutations in this alone, according to the WHO.
The samples were taken from a municipal public fitness service check, rivm said, adding, “It’s not yet transparent whether those other people have also video from southern Africa. “
As of Monday night, 33 instances of omicron had been shown in Europe, in 8 countries: the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Portugal, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. It has also been discovered in some places, from Hong Kong to Israel.
The omicron variant has triggered a wave of new restrictions targeting South Africa and other southern African countries. Almost immediately, new bans were announced or proposed across the EU, the US and canada. USA And Canada, as well as Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom.
Ramaphosa insists that those bans be lifted, saying, “It’s unfair, it’s discriminatory to oppose us.
Health experts have long questioned the effectiveness of such bans, and in the case of the coronavirus, many of the omicron variants have already spread too temporarily to be contained in any component of the world.
Days after South Africa informed the WHO of the new variant, Botswana said its COVID-19 genomic surveillance had discovered 4 instances of omicron in foreign diplomats who entered the country on November 7.
“It’s unclear exactly where the variant arose,” as reported through fitness data site STAT. “It may be that South Africa and Botswana saw it early because they have strong genetic sequencing networks. “
The other 4 people tested positive on 11 November as they were ready to leave Botswana; their samples were re-analyzed after the alarm given about the variant.
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