Covid-19: Two foci of South African variant in France: patients recently returned from Mozambique | Watch

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Covid-19: Two foci of South African variant in France: patients recently returned from Mozambique | Watch

3:32 CAT | 15 Jan 2021

France's Minister of Health Olivier Véran on January 14, 2021 [Photo: RTL]

French health officials have detected two cases of the South African Covid-19 variant in patients returning from a religious trip to Mozambique, which took place in December.

France is in a race against time with two new coronavirus mutations. The country’s Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced at the government’s weekly pandemic press conference on Thursday (January 14) that 200 to 300 new contaminations with the British variant were being detected every day in the country.

The authorities also fear the spread of a South African strain of Covid-19 already at the centre of several outbreaks in France, with three cases identified on Wednesday.

The French Minister of Health announced on Thursday that a woman who had spent a few days in Mozambique in December as part of a trip with a religious congregation was hospitalised and in critical condition in Île-de-France. Another person infected during the same trip has been identified in Nantes.

Also read: New coronavirus variant not yet confirmed in Mozambique – AIM report

The French authorities are working to isolate the two clusters and prevent the spread of the virus in the two regions.

Protect French territories overseas

The two new variants [South African and British] are said to be more contagious than the virus so far circulating in France, but do not seem to cause more serious illness, said the minister.

Their high contagiousness, however, raises fears of hospitals in the country filling up faster, as in the United Kingdom, where the new VOC-2020 Covid-19 strain now accounts for the majority infections in the country.

The 501Y.V2 strain of the virus identified in October by South African researchers now accounts for more than two-thirds of cases in that country [South Africa].

Measures including border controls are being taken to prevent the new variant spreading to France’s overseas territories in Mayotte, Guyana and Reunion.

By Benjamin Hue

Watch yesterday’s press conference in the RT France video below: