New variant? “It’s a concern for the whole world”
“… a concern for the whole world, “said the prime minister, who was speaking to journalists on arrival at the Teatro Nacional D.Maria II, in Lisbon.
António Costa, who, in an attempt to contain this variant, “the European Union has adopted a set of measures to restrict travel to a number of countries” and, in Portugal, from next week, “it becomes mandatory for testing in all flights from wherever you are”.
And he indicated that “at this moment” passengers on “all flights from Southern Africa” are already being tested.
“Just yesterday, on one of the last flights that took place from Maputo to Lisbon, all passengers were tested, they are in quarantine, and the genomic sequencing of the viruses detected in recent weeks is being carried out in order to verify whether in some cases there are already some of these variants,” he indicated.
The prime minister also said that, although “in several European countries” the presence of this hitherto unknown variant was “detected, until now in Portugal it has not been”.
“But we are not an island in the world, hopefully not [se registem casos], but the work is being done to make this identification and, in that case, to take the measures taken”, emphasize.
On the occasion, the head of government was also asked about the repatriation flights for the Portuguese, having indicated that “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is organizing, according to its competence, the set of measures that are required to support our compatriots who, surprised, with the appearance of this variant, they are retained in different parts of the world”.
Recalling that “in the first wave” it was necessary to “repatriate all the Portuguese who were in Wuhan”, a Chinese city where the first cases of covid-19 were registered, António Costa said that this was a “great success” operation, regretting that there has been “the need to repeat several times”.
The minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, apologized today and apologized and apologized for the inconvenience caused by the suspension of flights to and from Mozambique as of Monday, pledging to carry out repatriation flights.
Covid-19 has caused at least 5,193,392 deaths worldwide, among more than 260.44 million infections with the new coronavirus registered since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.
In Portugal, since March 2020, 18,417 people have died and 1,142,707 cases of infection have been recorded, according to data from the General Directorate of Health.
The disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
A new variant, an Omicron, was recently detected in South Africa and, according to the World Health Organization, the “high number of mutations” may imply greater infectivity.
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