France, Lebanon confirm first cases of UK coronavirus variant

PanARMENIAN.Net - Health authorities in France and Lebanon have confirmed their first cases of the coronavirus variant that prompted global travel restrictions and strict lockdown measures in the United Kingdom, Al Jazeera reports.

The French health ministry said a French man who arrived in France from the British capital, London, on December 19 had tested positive for the new variant on Friday, December 25.

He had no symptoms and was isolating in his home in the central city of Tours.

Authorities have carried out contact-tracing for the health professionals taking care of the patient, the ministry said. Any of their contacts that were seen as vulnerable would similarly be isolated, it said.

In addition to this first case, several other positive samples that “may suggest the VOC 202012/01 variant are being sequenced” by the specialist laboratories of the national Pasteur Institute, the statement added.

In Lebanon, the country’s caretaker health minister said on Friday that a case of the new variant was detected on a flight arriving from London.

Italian authorities have detected the new strain in a patient in Rome, while Japan reported five cases in passengers arriving from the UK. Singapore confirmed one case of the new variant, while the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that nine cases have been detected in Denmark and one each in the Netherlands and Australia.