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Passengers wait for the result of their Covid test at Amsterdam-Schipohl Airport
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SOCIAL MEDIA PHOTO OBTAINED BY REUTERS / via REUTERS
Dozens of passengers who landed in Amsterdam from South Africa are infected with the corona virus, according to Dutch authorities. However, it has not yet been clarified whether this is the new virus variant B.1.1.529, the newspaper "De Telegraaf" quoted the health authorities on Saturday night. Follow-up examinations by the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam should show that. On Friday morning, two KLM aircraft with around 600 people on board landed at Schipohl Airport. The machines had started in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
A spokesman for the health department said the newspaper said there were now 110 results.
Of these, 15 results are positive and 95 results are negative.
Based on these results, a rate of 13.6 percent is assumed.
That means that one must reckon with 85 positive cases.
The infected people would be housed in a guarded isolation hotel, it said.
Anyone who receives a negative test result is allowed to leave the airport, but has to be quarantined at home for five days and retested after five days.
Travelers with a positive test result would stay at the hotel for at least seven days if they had complaints and five days if they had no complaints.
Like other countries, the Netherlands had imposed a landing ban for flights from southern Africa due to the emergence of the new virus variant.
This applied from Friday, 12 noon.
Passengers who were still traveling from the region had to be tested after arriving at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and then placed in quarantine.
Germany and other EU countries such as Denmark and Italy had also imposed travel restrictions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) classified variant B.1.1.529 as "worrying" on Friday.
Experts fear that the many mutations in the variant will cause the pathogen to spread faster or that the vaccines will lose their protective effect.
A first case was reported in Belgium on Friday.
Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst wrote on Twitter that it was about a person who returned to Belgium from Egypt on November 11.
The person showed the first symptoms on November 22nd.
oka / dpa
