Israel has identified a case of a Covid-19 variant with a large number of mutations first detected in South Africa, the health ministry said Friday.
“The variant discovered in southern African states has been identified in Israel,” the ministry said, adding it was recorded “in a person who returned from Malawi”.
Two more cases were detected in “people returning from abroad”, it said, adding that they had been placed in quarantine.
The three people were all vaccinated, the health ministry said, without specifying the number of doses or the type of vaccine.
News of its spread to Israel comes a day after scientists in South Africa said they had detected the new B.1.1.529 strain with at least 10 mutations, compared with two for Delta.
The variant was of “serious concern” and had been blamed for a surge in infection numbers, authorities in South Africa said Thursday.
It had also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong among travelers from South Africa, they said.
Israel was one of the first countries to launch vaccines against the coronavirus last year thanks to a deal with Pfizer that gave it access to millions of doses in exchange for data on the vaccine’s efficacy.
More than 5.7 million of the country’s nine million people are now fully vaccinated.
