BRUSSELS — Dutch officials said Tuesday that they detected the omicron variant in samples collected almost two weeks ago, days earlier than the arrival of two flights from South Africa carrying infected passengers.
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This is yet another indication that the potentially more contagious variant was already in the European Union when countries banned air travel from southern African countries to stop omicron’s spread.
So far, 44 cases of the omicron variant have been reported in 11 countries in Europe, the E.U.’s public health body said Tuesday. Austria, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands are among the countries where cases of the new variant have been confirmed.
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“We have found the Omicron coronavirus variant in two test samples that were taken on Nov. 19 and Nov. 23,” the National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said in a statement. “It is not clear yet whether these people have visited Southern Africa.”
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Late Thursday, South Africa’s top health officials announced that they had discovered a potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus, an announcement that sent the world into panic and stock markets tumbling.
Announcement of new virus variant alarms world as stock markets crash and flights are banned.
The next day, two planes carrying about 600 passengers from South Africa landed in the Netherlands with 61 people testing positive for the virus, 14 of whom had the omicron variant.
Immediately, all 27 E.U. nations and Britain, the United States and others banned flights from southern African countries. South African leaders decried this action as unnecessary and punitive, arguing that South Africa’s detecting the variant first does not mean it originated in that country.
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The news from Netherlands changes the timeline for the variant’s arrival in that country and possibly elsewhere in Europe.
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By the time Dutch authorities were sounding the alarm about a flight from South Africa on Nov. 26, samples of the variant had been collected but not yet identified in Britain, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
The earliest samples identified so far still come from southern Africa. The first known case of the variant dates to Nov. 9 and involves a 34-year-old man near Johannesburg. And on Nov. 11, samples exhibiting the variant were collected in Botswana. Experts caution, though, that the variant could have come from elsewhere. Genetic sequencing labs in many countries are looking back at samples collected over the past month.
Omicron variant detected at Netherlands airport
The revised timeline underscores warnings from public health experts who had said that travel bans had come too late to be effective.
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“Our measures are failing,” Jeffrey V. Lazarus, a health systems and policy professor at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health, said in an interview over the weekend, adding that more safety measures are needed to prevent infected people from traveling. “Why are we closing the borders now? How many variants of concern do we need? There will be some disturbances, and costs, but travel has gotten too relaxed.”
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Still, as scientists race to learn more about the variant and whether existing vaccines can fight it, European countries continue to enact measures they say could help curb the virus’s spread. Europe had been experiencing a surge of coronavirus cases when the omicron variant was detected.
Switzerland said Monday that anyone — vaccinated or unvaccinated — arriving there from any of the growing list of countries where the variant has been detected must quarantine for 10 days on arrival. Local Polish media reported that Poland had enacted similar measures.
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And in Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday that his country will make vaccination against the coronavirus mandatory for all people over the age of 60 and will apply 100 euro monthly fines for noncompliance. That money, he said, will be used to support the hospital system.
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“It is not a punishment,” Mitsotakis said. “I would say it is the price for health.”
The executive director of the European Medicines Agency told lawmakers Monday that it could take two weeks to learn whether the current vaccines are effective against the omicron variant.
If omicron does require a new vaccine, Emer Cooke said, approving for use in the E.U. could take up to four months.
“We are prepared,” Cooke told E.U. lawmakers, according to the Associated Press. “We know that at some stage there will be a mutation that means we have to change the current approach.”
Chico Harlan and Quentin Aries contributed to this report.