- EDITIONS: Spanish News Today Murcia Today Alicante Today
ARCHIVED - Andalusia reports one case of Brazilian variant and 16 of new B1258 variant
There is concern among the regional health authorities over the highly infectious nature of the new strain that has appeared in Almería, Córdoba and Málaga.
Andalusia’s first imported case of the Brazilian variant of Covid-19 has been reported in Seville, the regional health department leader Jesús Aguirre has reported, and there are also now 16 known cases in the region of a new, highly infectious variant, information on which has been sent to the EU for classification.
The health authorities in Andalusia are concerned about the new variant, dubbed B1258, which has so far been detected in Almería, Córdoba and Málaga as it appears to be highly infectious and less susceptible to acquired immunity, either from vaccination or from having had the virus before.
Eleven cases of the South African variant have also been detected in Andalusia, along with four patients suffering from the "Uganda variant", one of whom has died while the other three are on their way to recovery.
Sr. Aguirre stressed that there are many variables in the evolution of the pandemic and called for extreme precaution and strict sanitary and prevention measures to be maintained, whilst also calling for increased volumes of vaccines to be delivered.