LONDON — The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.
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The United Kingdom on Saturday tightened its rules on mask-wearing and on testing of international arrivals after finding two cases. New cases were confirmed Saturday in Germany and Italy, with Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong also reporting that the variant has been found in travelers there.
In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases expert, said he would not be surprised if the omicron variant is already in the United States.
"We have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you're already having travel-related cases that they've noted in Israel and Belgium and other places, when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over," Fauci said during an interview on the "Today" show Saturday.
The White House announced Friday restrictions for travelers from eight African countries will go into effect Monday.
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Fauci said travel bans are simply a way of buying time given the threat of the virus.
"The issue of blocking travel from a given country is to just give us time to assess it better," he said. "That's the reason for doing that, not any reason to panic, but we want to give us some time to really fill in the blanks of what we don't know right now."
Because of fears that the new variant has the potential to be more resistant to the protection offered by vaccines, there are growing concerns around the world that the pandemic and associated lockdown restrictions will persist for far longer than hoped.
Nearly two years since the start of the pandemic that has claimed more than 5 million lives around the world, countries are on high alert. Many have already imposed travel restrictions on flights from southern Africa as they seek to buy time to assess whether the omicron variant is more transmissible than the current dominant delta variant.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was necessary to take "targeted and precautionary measures" after two people tested positive for the new variant in England.
"Right now, this is the responsible course of action to slow down the speeding and the spread of this new variant and to maximize our defenses," he said at a news conference.
Among the measures announced, Johnson said anyone arriving in England must take a PCR test for covid-19 on the second day after their arrival and self-isolate until they provide a negative test. And if someone tests positive for the omicron variant, their close contacts will have to self-isolate for 10 days regardless of their vaccination status, he said. Currently close contacts are exempt from quarantine rules if they are fully vaccinated.
He also said mask-wearing in shops and on public transportation will be required and the independent group of scientists that advises the British government on the rollout of coronavirus vaccines has been asked to accelerate the vaccination program. This could involve widening the booster program to younger age groups, reducing the time period between a second dose and a booster, and allowing older children to get second doses.
"From today we're going to boost the booster campaign," he said.
Britain's Department of Health said the two cases found in the U.K. were linked and involved travel from southern Africa. One of the two new cases was in the southeastern English town of Brentwood, while the other was in the central city of Nottingham. The two confirmed cases are self-isolating with their households while contact tracing and targeted testing takes place.
The British government also added four more countries -- Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia -- to the country's travel red list as of today.
Six others -- Botswana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe -- were added Friday. That means anyone permitted to arrive from those destinations will have to quarantine.
Many countries have slapped restrictions on various southern African countries over the past couple of days. They include Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Iran, Japan, Thailand and the United States. This goes against the advice of the World Health Organization, which has warned against any overreaction before the variant is thoroughly studied.
There are mounting concerns that the variant has already been widely seeded around the world.
ITALIAN CASE
An Italian who had traveled to Mozambique on business landed in Rome on Nov. 11 and returned to his home near Naples. He and five family members, including two school-age children, have since tested positive for the new variant, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. All are isolating in the Naples suburb of Caserta in good condition with slight symptoms.
The variant was confirmed by Sacco hospital in Milan, and Italy's National Health Institute said the man had received two doses of the vaccine. Italy's health ministry is urging all regions to increase its tracing of the virus and sequencing to detect cases of the new variant.
The Dutch public health institute said the omicron variant was "probably found in a number of the tested persons" who were isolated after arriving Friday in Amsterdam on two flights from South Africa.
Israel said it detected the new strain in a traveler who had returned from Malawi and the country was tracing 800 travelers who returned recently from southern African countries. Also, Australia said early today that its scientists were working to determine whether two people who tested positive for covid after arriving from southern Africa are infected with the omicron variant.
The variant's swift spread among young people in South Africa has alarmed health professionals even though there was no immediate indication that the variant causes more severe disease.
A number of pharmaceutical firms -- including AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer -- said they have plans in place to adapt their vaccines in light of the emergence of omicron. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said they expect to be able to tweak their vaccine in about 100 days.
Professor Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which developed the AstraZeneca vaccine, expressed cautious optimism that existing vaccines will be effective at preventing serious disease from the omicron variant, noting that most of the mutations appear to be in similar regions as those in other variants.
"At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against a new variant for serious disease, but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed," he told BBC radio.
Some experts said the variant's emergence illustrated how rich countries' hoarding of vaccines threatens to prolong the pandemic.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa have been fully immunized against covid-19, and millions of health workers and vulnerable populations have yet to receive a single dose. Those conditions can speed up spread of the virus, offering more opportunities for it to evolve into a dangerous variant.
"One of the key factors to emergence of variants may well be low vaccination rates in parts of the world, and the WHO warning that none of us is safe until all of us are safe" should be heeded," said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Saturday with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, and they stressed the importance of working together to help African nations vaccinate their populations, the State Department said in a statement. It said Blinken praised South Africa's scientists for quickly identifying the omicron variant and the government for its transparency in sharing this information, "which should serve as a model for the world."
In Germany, the Max von Pettenkofer Institute, a Munich-based microbiology center, said the omicron variant was confirmed in two travelers who arrived Wednesday on a flight from South Africa. The head of the institute, Oliver Keppler, said genome sequencing has yet to be completed. But it is "proven without doubt that it is this variant," German news agency dpa reported.
The institute said in a statement that further sequencing analysis is underway to determine for sure that it is the new variant. The results were expected today. A total of 61 people were tested.
'WAKE-UP CALL'
Germany's health minister said Saturday that he hopes that the sight of air force planes transferring patients across the country will act as a "wake-up call" to millions who are still holding out on getting vaccinated against covid-19.
Health Minister Jens Spahn said there has been a welcome increase over the past week in the number of people getting their first shots, with 450,000 recorded. He put that down to pressure from Germany's worsening coronavirus situation and to increasing requirements for people to provide proof of vaccination or recent recovery to take part in many activities.
But it's still not enough, and "this figure of nearly 12 million unvaccinated adults is still far, far too high," Spahn said at an online town-hall event. So far, 68.4% of the population of 83 million people is fully vaccinated, below the 75% minimum threshold eyed by the government. There are significant regional variations.
Hospitals in southern and eastern regions of Germany have warned that they are running out of intensive care beds because of the large numbers of seriously ill covid-19 patients. Germany is having to organize large-scale transfers of patients within the country for the first time since the outbreak began in early 2020, including with help from the military.
"This hopefully will give many people a wake-up call that vaccination is a pretty good thing," Spahn said.
Germany has seen a relentless increase in coronavirus infections over recent weeks, with the infection rate hitting a new high every day. On Saturday, it stood at 444.3 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days. Germany's known covid-19 death toll climbed above 100,000 on Thursday.
A new government is expected to take over in early December, and the transition period has been blamed for paralyzing Germany's response to the pandemic.
Information for this article was contributed by Pan Pylas, Geir Moulson, Mike Corder, Colleen Barry, Lynn Berry and Fares Akram of The Associated Press; and by Jessica Schladebeck of New York Daily News.