Israel’s health ministry confirmed a case of a coronavirus subvariant known as the Delta strain that was previously detected in several European nations.
“The variation AY 4.2. reported in several European countries has been identified in Israel,” the ministry stated in a late Tuesday statement.
The carrier was identified as an 11-year-old boy arriving from Europe, the government said, adding that the case was identified at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. The youngster was confined, and the government said no more contacts had been established.
The AY 4.2. variation has been reported in the United Kingdom on multiple occasions.
According to Francois Balloux, a University College London professor of computational systems biology, the subvariant is uncommon and does not appear to represent the same risk of dramatically increased transmission as other variants.
The variant was discovered as Israel contemplates relaxing travel restrictions in light of a decline in cases.
An earlier attempt to reopen the borders failed due to increased cases attributed to the Delta strain.
In late August and early September, daily new cases exceeded 11,000 for the first time.
Authorities began an aggressive effort to immunize individuals with a third booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, significantly reducing illness rates.
Authorities reported 1,487 additional cases in the preceding 24 hours on Wednesday.
“Because AY.4.2 is still quite uncommon, a 10{7d6bb1f761e691f027164c9fe6d1ebbc4659a250013ce39dc45a15ede39dbac5} increase in its transmissibility could have resulted in only a few additional cases,” he explained. “As such, it has not been responsible for the recent spike in the number of cases in the United Kingdom.”
“This is not similar to the emergence of Alpha and Delta, which were significantly more transmissible (50 percent or more) than any strain in circulation at the time,” Bayroux remarked.
“In this case, we’re dealing with a minor increase in transmissibility that would have no appreciable effect on the pandemic.”
