The authorities of the state of Hesse, located in western Germany, which includes Frankfurt Airport, announced today, Saturday, the first suspected infection of the new mutant of the Corona virus “Omicron” in the country, noting that the suspected case belongs to a person who recently returned from South Africa.
This came through a tweet by the state’s Minister of Social Affairs, Kai Klose, on his Twitter account, in which he said, “It is likely that the mutant Omicron is already present in Germany.”
“We discovered several mutations identical to the Omicron strain last night in a traveler returning from South Africa,” Klose wrote, according to Reuters.
And Germany announced yesterday, Friday, that it would ban the majority of flights from South Africa due to the new mutation of the Corona virus.
And the outgoing German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, explained that “this decision, which will be implemented from Friday evening, will include South Africa and most likely its neighboring countries,” noting that only German citizens will be allowed to return, while they are quarantined for a period of 14 days, even if they are vaccinated.
It is worth noting that Germany is setting new records in daily infections with the Corona virus, as data from the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases showed, today, Saturday, that the number of confirmed infections with the virus that causes the Covid-19 epidemic in Germany rose to 5,717,295 after recording 67,125 new infections.
The data also indicated that the total number of deaths increased to 100,779, after 303 new deaths were recorded.
Yesterday, Friday, German Health Minister Jens Spahn called in Berlin to urgently reduce the volume of social contact to avoid a disaster due to Corona in Germany.
“The situation is very serious. More dangerous than at any point in the past during this pandemic,” Spahn said.
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