The Netherlands places more than 60 infected travelers from South Africa…

In the Netherlands, 61 passengers on two planes returning from South Africa on Friday have tested positive for Covid-19. It is not yet clear whether it also concerns the new omikron variant. Two infections in Hong Kong already indicate that the new variant is very contagious.

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KLM flights from Cape Town and Johannesburg landed at Schiphol Airport in quick succession on Friday, with around 600 people on board. The passengers of the two aircraft were kept separate. The local municipal health service (GGD) was instructed by the Dutch Ministry of Health to test them for the corona virus.

Meanwhile, all travelers who have arrived in the Netherlands from southern Africa since last Monday have been called on to be tested as soon as possible. Resigning Health Minister Hugo de Jonge writes in a letter to the House of Representatives, the Dutch parliament, that people who have tested positive must be quarantined.

The infected persons are housed in a guarded isolation hotel. “They stay there for a period of at least seven days if they have complaints and five days if they have no complaints,” said a GGD spokesperson. Anyone who receives a negative test result must be quarantined at home for five days to be tested again after five days.

It is not yet clear whether the infected passengers have contracted the omikron variant of the corona virus. This should later become apparent from follow-up research by the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.

Entry ban in Belgium

There are no direct flights to our country from South Africa. Yet there is already one with us infection detected. For the time being, an entry ban has therefore been laid down for everyone who has been in South Africa in the past two weeks. The only exception is for Belgians and people who have their main residence here.

High viral load

The new coronavirus variant was first identified in South Africa and is causing concern in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Omikron may be even more contagious than other variants, and there is also uncertainty about the effectiveness of current vaccines.

Two infections in Hong Kong make scientists fear the worst for the contagiousness. The PCR tests on both men, who were negative a few days earlier, had a Ct value of 18 and 19. “That’s insanely high, especially when you consider that the two were still negative on the previous PCR test,” said epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding.

According to data from the Hong Kong government, the omikron variant was brought in by a traveler from South Africa, who had been in a quarantine hotel since his arrival on Nov. 11. On November 13, he passed a positive test. It is suspected that the man – despite strict isolation – had infected a sixty-year-old man in the room opposite his in the quarantine hotel. The sixty-year-old tested positive on November 18, in a fourth PCR test.

air traffic

The number of countries that are taking measures to limit the spread of the variant is growing. After Belgium, the US and Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel, among others, Brazil also wants to restrict air traffic from southern Africa. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, reported this on Friday evening, local time.

Two infections with the new variant have now been identified in the United Kingdom.

‘Worldwide vaccination’

US President Joe Biden has called for more corona vaccines to be made available to poorer countries. Referring to the new corona variant omikron, he said Friday evening that “the news about this new variant makes it clearer that this pandemic is not over until we have global vaccinations.”

Biden also said the United States has so far given away more vaccines than all other countries combined. He also calls again for the removal of intellectual property rights on corona medicines.

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