Dutch health officials said 61 people who arrived in Amsterdam on flights from South Africa on Friday (26) tested positive for Covid-19. The travelers will carry out new tests this Saturday (27) to see if any of the infections are from the Ômicron variant.
About 600 passengers arrived at Schiphol Airport in the Dutch capital on two KLM flights and faced hours of delays and testing due to concerns about the new strain of the virus.
“Travelers who test positive will be placed in isolation in a hotel near Schiphol,” health officials said in a statement.
“Regarding the positive results, we are researching as soon as possible if they refer to the new variant, now called Ômicron.”
The Dutch government banned all air travel from South Africa on Friday morning. The Netherlands’ Health Minister, Hugo de Jonge, determined that passengers who were already on their way to the country would undergo tests and quarantine on arrival.
Passengers on the two KLM flights, Cape Town and Johannesburg, said they had been waiting for hours on the tarmac.
“Heavy applause because there’s a bus that has come to take us somewhere,” tweeted New York Times journalist Stephanie Nolen, a passenger on the Johannesburg flight who later said she had a negative result.
A spokesman for health authorities in Kennemerland, the Dutch region that oversees Schiphol, said the positive cases were being analyzed by an academic medical hospital to determine if they were of the new strain.
The new variant has already been detected in other regions, while European countries are battling an increase in coronavirus cases.
The Dutch government separately announced on Friday night closures of bars, restaurants and most stores as it tries to stem a record wave of Covid cases that is straining its health care system.
Reference: CNN Brasil
