A case of contamination by new variant of the Covid-19 virus identified in South Africa was detected in Alberta, the first reported in Canada, revealed Friday the head of the health authorities of this province.
“Alberta has detected its first case of the South African variant of Covid-19”, announced on Twitter the chief of public health of this province of western Canada, Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
The affected person, who recently traveled abroad, has been placed in quarantine. “There is no evidence at present that the virus has infected other people”, she added.
Sharp acceleration of the pandemic in Canada
This discovery, which had not been confirmed Friday evening by the federal authorities, comes a few weeks after the announcement at the end of December of the first cases of contamination in Canada by another variant of the coronavirus circulating in the United Kingdom, considered to be more transmissible.
Ottawa immediately suspended all flights from that country, suspension lifted Wednesday.
Since December, Canada has experienced a sharp acceleration of the pandemic, which has notably led to re-containments in the two most affected provinces, Ontario and Quebec. In the French-speaking province, a nighttime curfew – the first in Canada since the start of the pandemic – will come into effect on Saturday evening.
Ottawa gave the green light to vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna and launched a historic vaccination campaign in mid-December.
Canada, a country of 38 million inhabitants, had more than 640,000 cases of coronavirus on Friday and nearly 16,700 deaths.
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