Johannesburg – The South African variant of the coronavirus has been picked up in Switzerland, according to Reuters.
The news agency reported that Switzerland documented five cases of a coronavirus variant from Britain and two cases of a South African variant, a Swiss health ministry official said on Tuesday, adding he anticipates more cases of these faster-spreading mutations will emerge.
According to Patrick Mathys, the health ministry’s crisis management section leader, he said that the Swiss supply of COVID-19 shots will be limited until more vaccines are approved by the nation’s regulator, likely next year.
Switzerland is the latest nation to record variant cases, as country after country reports similar infections, prompting some nations to ban travel to Great Britain and South Africa amid fears a more-virulent virus could exacerbate strapped health care systems.
“Until now, there’s no evidence that these strains are spreading in large numbers in Switzerland,” Mathys told Reuters, of the variants.
“But it would be an illusion to think that these infections, which have been confirmed in the laboratory, are the only ones that exist in Switzerland. We have to expect that we’ll find more, and it’s probable that there has already been transmission,” he further said.
Japan on Monday detected a coronavirus variant found in South Africa, the government said, the first such discovery in a nation that has already identified more than a dozen cases of another variant that is spreading rapidly in Britain.
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