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Health

Minister of Health says there is no new Angolan variant of the coronavirus

The Health Minister said this Monday that there is no new Angolan variant, but a strain diagnosed in the country, as a result of the biosafety measures taken in the disembarkation of passengers on international flights.

: Gaspar dos Santos
Gaspar dos Santos  

Sílvia Lutucuta, who was speaking at a press conference, rejected information circulated about a new, more transmissible variant of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in samples collected in Angola.

The minister recalled that at the end of December 2020, the multisectoral commission to combat covid-19 and the sector responsible for health in Angola mobilized themselves to find solutions for genotyping and molecular tests capable of diagnosing new variants, with greater concern for the English, South African, Brazilian and others.

According to the minister, these variants were already referred to as highly transmissible, associated with high mortality and also in young people and without comorbidities.

In this context, continued Sílvia Lutucuta, the National Institute for Health Research, in partnership with the Crispy laboratory in South Africa, has been processing samples for the diagnosis of these variants by genotyping.

"And from the first shipment sent to South Africa, we already obtained results that we shared on the 5th of March, for the months of January to February. We had 17 cases: seven with the South African strain, five with the English strain, one case with a Nigerian strain and three cases with a new strain detected in three Tanzanian players, whose diagnosis was made in the immediate post-disembarkation at 4 de Fevereiro Airport and these players were immediately isolated in our institutional isolation center in Barra do Kwanza, cutting if so the chain of transmission ", stressed the minister.

The head of Health clarified with this explanation "the news that has been circulating referring to a new Angolan variant".

"It is not a new Angolan variant, but a new variant that was diagnosed in Angola, as a result of the measures that we have taken and the screening and testing process in the immediate disembarkation that we have done at our 4 de Fevereiro Airport", said the minister, underlining that "one of the important weapons without relent against covid-19, is, on the one hand, epidemiological surveillance, on the other hand, assertive laboratory surveillance".

According to the minister, the country has these measures to control the entry of the new strain in Angola.

"An RT-PCR test is carried out up to 72 hours before departure, we carry out the immediate antigen test on disembarkation at the airport 4 de Fevereiro, these passengers are quarantined for up to ten days and a new test is carried out, and if you have the result negative, the title of epidemiological discharge is issued ", he said.

However, the minister admitted that there is already circulation of the English strain in Luanda, attending to cases that affect young people, adolescents and the pediatric population, with critically ill patients and deaths in these categories, being "a warning sign for new strains".

"Our laboratory in Viana also recently received reagents capable of detecting the new English strain and, in the last three days, in the processed samples of positive cases, 64 cases of the new English variant have been detected. We are also concerned that most of the these samples are from patients who have no relation to travel or travelers and are samples from our sentinel hospitals, which are the national hospitals, including the pediatric hospital ", he stressed.

Another concern of the authorities, said the minister, has to do with non-compliance with the measures set out in the calamity decree, recalling that "covid-19 has not yet disappeared".

"We have seen an increase in cases in the last week," he said, by appealing to the population for collaboration, complying with the biosafety measures, "which are simple", of individual and collective protection, so that the gains obtained so far are not lost. .

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