At least 60 people test positive after flying from South Africa to Amsterdam as fears rise over new Omicron variant
Dutch health authorities said Saturday that 61 passengers from two flights from South Africa tested positive for Covid-19 and the results were being examined for the new Omicron variant.
The people who tested positive were now being quarantined in a hotel near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, where the 600 people on board the two planes from Johannesburg spent hours waiting on Friday.
"We now know that 61 of the results were positive and 531 negative," the Dutch Health Authority (GGD) said in a statement.
"The positive test results will be examined as soon as possible to determine whether this concerns the new worrisome variant, which has since been given the name Omicron variant."
It comes as a German regional official said on Saturday that health authorities have identified the first suspected case in the country of the new variant, in a person who returned from South Africa.
"The Omicron variant has with strong likelihood already arrived in Germany," Kai Klose, social affairs minister in the western state of Hesse, tweeted, referring to the strain first detected in southern Africa.
"As there is this strong suspicion, the person has been isolated at home. The full sequencing is still to be completed."
Mr Klose's ministry said that the person had arrived in Germany, the EU's most populous country, at Frankfurt international airport, the country's busiest.
The Czech Republic is also examining a suspected case of the Omicron variant detected in a person who spent time in Namibia, the National Institute of Public Health said on Saturday.
"A lab is checking a possible find of a positive specimen of the Omicron variant. We are awaiting confirmation or refutation of the case," spokesperson Stepanka Cechova said in an emailed statement.
EU health authorities have said the new strain poses a "high to very high risk" to the continent.
In the Netherlands all passengers who tested positive must stay in quarantine at the hotel for seven days if they show symptoms and for five days if they do not, the GGD said.
Passengers who tested negative, but who are remaining in the Netherlands, are expected to isolate at home.
"We understand that people are frustrated by this," the statement added, "people have just made a long trip with the idea that they will shortly be home," it said.
"Instead just after landing, they are confronted with a situation we have never before experienced in the Netherlands, namely that people have to be tested at Schiphol and are forced to wait until they get a result."
Those who do not live in the Netherlands can "continue their journey", it said.
