Belgium’s health ministry told AFP today that the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) variant strain that has ravaged Britain has also emerged in the country, with four confirmed cases recorded earlier this month.
Jan Eyckmans, a spokesman for the health minister, said they found the four cases earlier this month in Flanders (Flemish), a region in the north bordering the Netherlands.
A spokesman for the National Viral Crisis Center said the confirmed cases are conservative data because the number of new strains of the virus detected in Belgium is much lower than in the United Kingdom, and some infections may not have been detected yet.
According to the expert panel, the variant strain found in the UK appears to be more infectious than other strains, but there is no evidence that it is more deadly or resistant to vaccines.
The emergence of the mutant strain has led more than 20 countries around the world, including Belgium, to suspend traffic from the United Kingdom to prevent the virus from entering the country.
But Van Laethem, an infectious disease expert, warned that the border closures may have been a step too slow, “after all, cases of this variant of the virus began circulating in the UK in September.
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