Two Covid cases of the newly identified variant in South Africa have been found in Hong Kong.
Two alarming cases of the new strain of Covid-19 in southern Africa have been found in travelers to Hong Kong.
One traveler from South Africa was found to have the variant – now known as B.1.1.529 – while the other was identified as a person quarantined in a hotel room across from them, Hong Kong authorities said. Kong said late on Thursday. That person may have been infected when air circulated between rooms, according to the government.
Tulio de Oliveira, a professor of bioinformatics who runs the genome sequencing organization at two South African universities, said in a press conference on Thursday.
South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla said the spike was “seriously worrying.” According to Anne von Gottberg, clinical microbiologist and head of respiratory diseases at the National Institutes of Infectious Diseases, virologists have detected nearly 100 cases of this variant in the country. this. World Health Organization officials met to discuss the virus, which has also been detected in Botswana.
Kereng Masupu, coordinator of the President’s Covid-19 Task Force, said that in Botswana – a neighboring country of South Africa – a new variant was detected in vaccinated people. The UK said late Thursday local time that it would temporarily suspend flights from South Africa and five neighboring countries due to concerns about B.1.1.529.
According to Thursday’s statement, 12 people who stayed in rooms close to the two cases in Hong Kong are undergoing a 14-day mandatory quarantine at a government facility.
Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world that has not recorded a community outbreak in the delta, the more contagious variant was first discovered in India and has now become the virus strain dominate the world. The surge has forced some countries that were able to contain Covid through quarantine and border control by 2020 to abandon that approach, turning instead to treating the virus as an endemic disease.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
