The news had already leaked but now the official confirmation arrives: the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has also arrived in Sardinia.
This was established by the sequencing carried out by the Microbiology and Virology laboratory of the Aou of Sassari on the swab of the passenger, who was returning from a trip to South Africa, on the Rome-Alghero flight .
The result was immediately communicated to the Higher Institute of Health and to the Department of the Sardinia Region.
"From the analyzes carried out by our structure it emerged that it is, in fact, the variant B.1.1.529 called Omicron - explains Salvatore Rubino, director of the Microbiology laboratory of the Aou in Sassari -. The sequence we performed was loaded on the platform of the Higher Institute of Health for the genomic surveillance of Sars-CoV2 variants (I-Co-Gen), which makes it possible to issue alerts on sequences of particular interest ".
Tomorrow the second swab will be carried out on the 118 passengers who were on the "offending" flight: so far they have all been negative but are still in precautionary quarantine. On board the plane there were also some Torres Calcio players and managers returning from an away match.
As the Aou says, “the investigations in search of coronavirus variants are also continuing in these days. Today, in fact, is the day of surveillance that the Higher Institute of Health has set for all of Italy. On this day all the accredited microbiology and virology laboratories, as well as that of the Aou of Sassari, participate with the analysis and sequencing of some swabs to verify the diffusion of the variants on the national territory ".
(Unioneonline / D)