Omicron variant was present in Europe 10 days before South Africa

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Omicron variant was present in Europe 10 days before South Africa

The Omicron variant of Covid 19 was present in Europe at least 10 days ago, even before South African health experts alerted the world to their concerns about the transmissibility of the newly identified variant.

The Dutch health authority said it had found the Omicron variant in two local cases going back 11 days, showing it was already in western Europe's heartland before the reports came out of South Africa on November 24.

Omicron was found in samples dating from 19 and 23 November, according to the health institute of the RIVM. Those findings predate the positive cases found in passengers returning from South Africa last Friday and were tested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

Despite the global concern, doctors in South Africa are reporting that patients are suffering mostly mild symptoms but warn that it is early. Most of the new cases are in people in their 20 s and 30 s who generally don't get as sick from Covid 19 as older patients.

The behaviour of the new variant appeared to be following previous patterns of dispersal and identification that have seen health authorities race to play catch up, with most cases relating to travel to southern Africa, as countries around the world disclosed scattered instances of Omicron.

The presence of Omicron in Europe earlier than previously believed came as the European Union medical agency chief said on Tuesday it is ready to deal with the new Omicron variant and that it will take two weeks to determine whether the current Covid 19 vaccines will be able to deal with it.

Emer Cooke, the Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, said if it needs a new vaccine to counter Omicron, it will take up to four months to get it approved for use in the 27 nation bloc.

Cooke told EU lawmakers that cooperation with the medical industry is already ongoing to prepare for such an eventuality.

We know that there will be a mutation that means we have to change the current approach. The emergence of a new variant, which features an unusually large number of mutations on its spike protein, has resulted in travel bans and new restrictions in a number of countries, as others including the UK have moved to speed up vaccination programmes.

While the overwhelming majority of current coronaviruses are the Delta variant, some experts fear Omicron could escape the protections of current vaccines and compete with Delta for dominance.

The head of the EU's public health agency said that 42 cases of the Omicron variant have been identified in 10 European countries as of Tuesday.

Andrea Ammon, who chairs the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said the confirmed cases were either mild or without symptoms, although in younger age groups were being looked at by authorities in the bloc.

If Omicron escapes immunity, we still need to wait for the investigations to be carried out in laboratories with recovered sera from people who have recovered. She said these are expected to be completed in a couple of weeks.

The variant has been detected in two Israeli doctors, one of whom returned from a conference in London in the past week. A doctor who returned from Britain had probably infected his colleague, a spokeswoman for Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv said the couple had received three doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, and has shown mild symptoms.

The World Health Organization WHO has warned that the global risk from the Omicron variant is very high based on early evidence, which could lead to surges with severe consequences Japan confirmed its first case on Tuesday, in a visitor who arrived from Namibia, a day after banning all foreign visitors as an emergency precaution against the variant.

A government spokesman said the patient, a man in his 30s, tested positive upon arrival at Tokyo's Narita airport on Sunday. He is being treated at a hospital and is isolated.

There are a lot of uncertainties about the Omicron variant, according to WHO.

It said preliminary evidence raised the possibility that the variant has mutations that could help it evade an immune-system response and increase its ability to spread from one person to another.

Countries should accelerate the use of vaccines as soon as possible, despite the fact that scientists are looking for evidence to better understand this variant.