Gorgas  studying second S. African covid variant  suspect

.The the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies (Icges), is analyzing a second suspected case of the South African strain of Covid-19 .

This South African variant of the virus was detected in late 2020, and like the one found in the United Kingdom, it is much more contagious than the original.

“We are going to evaluate another case from South Africa that came out PCR positive,” said the institute’s director Juan Miguel Pascale, on TVN. “What the surveillance system is doing is seeing and detecting if some type of variant is arriving from other countries,”

The Health authorities had already reported a first case of the South African variant after multiple analyzes of the people who arrived in Panama by air on January 5.

At the time it was reported that the 40-year-old passenger, born in Zimbabwe, entered the country from South Africa and had previously made a stopover in the Netherlands. When he arrived he was asymptomatic, but five days later he was tested and it came back positive.

Pascale warned that the variants that originated in the United Kingdom,  South Africa, Brazil, and a fourth that is currently circulating in California, United States, are worrying.

“These variants, mainly the United Kingdom and South Africa have shown that they are more efficient for transmission.”