Dutch health authorities said that the Omicron variant had been identified in at least 13 people who got tested at Amsterdam Schiphol airport after landing from South Africa on Friday.
Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said in a statement published Sunday that the variant had been detected through the sequencing of the 61 positive Covid-19 results obtained by local health authorities at the airport on Friday.
It added that the sequencing “had not been entirely completed” and that it was “possible that the new variant will be found in more test samples.”
A statement posted Saturday by RIVM said that Omicron had been “presumably found” in a number of people tested at the airport on Friday morning.
A total of 624 passengers from two flights returning from South Africa were tested by GGD Kennemerland (the municipal health service responsible for the Amsterdam Schiphol airport) upon arrival, GGD said Friday.
Some context: The Netherlands put in place a flight ban on Friday on several countries of Southern Africa. Flights may continue if they carry Dutch citizens and/or travelers with an EU or Schengen-area passport.
Those citizens can enter the Netherlands with a negative PCR test result taken in the past 24 hours and have to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival, or for five days if they show a negative test result, per a notice from the Dutch government’s website.
The two flights that landed on Friday morning at Amsterdam Schiphol airport had left South Africa before the flight ban took effect at 12 p.m. Dutch time. Dutch authorities said that “passengers of the flights that were already en route to the Netherlands before the flight ban came into effect will do a PCR test after landing and go into quarantine.”