The microbiology service of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital has reported this Monday that it corresponds to a traveler from South Africa
The Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid confirmed this Monday the primary case of the omicron variant in Spain. The microbiology service of the middle has reported that it is a traveler from South Africa and that the patient “is okay”. The fifty one-year-previous man came back from that country this Sunday, November 28, once stopping off in Amsterdam, he has “mild symptoms” and is “in isolation, in quarantine,” in step with the Madrid Ministry of Health in a very statement. Catalonia, for its part, has detected two suspected cases of carrying the new virus lineage at the Barcelona airport, 2 travelers additionally from South Africa who are kept in isolation. The Generalitat hopes to confirm it tomorrow, Tuesday.
The General Directorate of Public Health, adds the Community, “maintains epidemiological surveillance of the close contacts of the flight that landed in Madrid from the Dutch capital.” This infection was detected by screening with an antigen check at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport; and therefore the sequencing has been determined this Monday through “an ultra-fast procedure” that allows the result to be obtained on the same day.
Fernando Lázaro, a microbiologist at the La Paz hospital in Madrid, explains that for these cases there’s an emergency sequencing procedure using a device referred to as MinION: “It’s a transportable device capable of completing the process in but twenty four hours. It’s not useful for large sequencing and it is somewhat additional imprecise than the standard one, which is slower, however it is worth more than enough to identify a variant in an exceedingly specific case ”, he points out.
Imported cases and restrictions
The Ministry of Health has tightened controls at airports since Saturday. Travelers from risk areas have to arrive with a recent negative check, even if they need a vaccination certificate, something that was not necessary before this weekend. Additionally, this Monday he revealed an order that needs a 10-day quarantine for all travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
These necessities are additionally to the sanitary controls that were in force, that included a visual inspection and a temperature measurement of the travelers. Given the suspicion of covid, the protocol included closing diagnostic tests at the airport itself.
With the newest knowledge out there from the ministry, this Monday , within the last seven days there have been 249 cases imported from another country, zero.46p.c of the entire diagnosed in the identical amount (54,010). The autonomous regions with the most imported infections registered during these days are the Canary Islands, with 66 cases, 3.15percent of the whole in this region within the last week; Valencian Community, with 42 (zero.67p.c); Madrid, with 35 (0.7%); and Andalusia, with 18 (0.fourpercent).
Relecov: an exploration network
The mutations detected in the virus last week in South Africa and Botswana have had confirmation thus far in half a dozen European countries and Spanish hospitals were already looking for it among the new infections that were occurring. Health authorities around the planet are awaiting this new variant given the uncertainty posed by its mutations, although at the instant it is not confirmed that it is a lot of contagious, that it causes more serious disease or that it escapes vaccines.
In all the autonomous communities there are hospitals that are half of Relecov, a network of laboratories to sequence a proportion of the positive samples in search of latest variants. The European Union recommends doing this procedure with between fivepercent and 10p.c of all detected cases. In Spain, since August five.5percent of the positive samples are done.
Inmaculada Casas, who coordinates Relecov from the National Center for Microbiology, explains that it’s a mechanism that is already terribly well greased which it started operating at full throttle with the delta variant . However this procedure takes concerning two days. To locate suspicious cases additional quickly, there are procedures such as the aforementioned MinION, or you’ll be able to additionally proceed by means of a PCR.