Something more than 150 travelers, a dozen them from Valladolid, try to return currently to Spain after the new international restrictions on the detection of the omicron variant surprised them in South Africa or in the neighboring nations, diplomatic sources reported.
“There is more than one hundred but we do not calculate that many more than 160 or 180. We refer to tourists or people who were in passing, not residents,” said EFE sources of the Embassy of Spain in South Africa, based on the data that
They could collect to date.
“Many are already at the airport or waiting for flights that can come out within a day or two,” added the sources.
Among them there are, for example, a dozen VALLADOLID travelers who stayed on land after the Swiss airline Swiss International Air Lines prevent them from flying as planned, when changing their policies and begin to accept only their nationals.
Other companies, such as the Dutch KLM, yes they are keeping their flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town (southwest), despite the restrictions ordered from Europe, and are moving from South Africa to residents of the European Union on commercial flights, provided that
Present the corresponding negative tests.
“Compared to what was the pandemic is not so complex,” the sources reassured, and also pointed out that, compared to other European countries that were calculated that they had thousands of tourists in South Africa these weeks, restrictions are not
Affecting such a large number of Spaniards.
Since there are commercial flights available, at the moment they do not raise repatriation flights.
The discovery of this new variant of the Coronavirus, identified as B.1.1,529 and baptized with the Greek letter ÓMicron by the WHO, was announced on Thursday by scientists and health authorities in South Africa, from samples taken in mid-November.
At the time of the announcement, contagions had already been identified in Botswana and Hong Kong (China), but after detections have been added in Israel, in Belgium (a case of a traveler from Egypt without apparent links to southern Africa),
Australia, United Kingdom and other places.
The new variant – of which, however, there are still very few cases confirmed in total – is characterized by presenting an unusual number of mutations (something more than thirty) whose impact should still be studied.
Despite the scarce information available (by the early detection), since the same day of the announcement, many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union nations, advertised rapidly travel restrictions for the countries of South Africa
.
Spain, although it has no direct flights to the area, it was also added to the European line and hardened the entry controls for travelers from that region, which must present a negative test even being vaccinated.
