Omicron variant confirmed in Samoa’s community cases

The Covid-19 Omicron variant is spreading in community transmission since the first community case was reported in Samoa last month.

The Government confirmed this in a media release issued Friday.

Samoa first recorded its community positive case on 17 March and soon saw a rapid spread of the virus within the community.

More than 50 samples of positive cases were prepared and sent to New Zealand for genomic sequencing.

The results returned Thursday afternoon confirmed that it is the BA.1 sub lineage of the Omicron variant that is now in the community.

This sub lineage of the Omicron variant was common in many countries since the beginning of 2022.

However, the most recent BA.2 sub lineage of the Omicron variant appears to have displaced the BA.1 in many countries including New Zealand and Australia.

The Government said 219 passengers arrived from Auckland on Tuesday, 29 March.

All the passengers were swabbed upon arrival at the airport prior to quarantine.

The results returned four positive cases.

Passengers will undertake their second tests today.

However, with the discovery of four positive cases from the flight on the 29 March and the re-assessment of the current situation in the country, this has led to the decision to extend the quarantine period for passengers from this flight to 10 days.

The earlier decision to commence the seven day quarantine for the flight of the 29 March has been revoked.

So far, Samoa has close to 2,000 positive cases with over a thousand community cases and one Covid-19 related death.

The country remains under a nationwide lockdown under Alert Level 3. 

 

     

Photo supplied 

Author: 
Talaia Mika