Cairo: Egypt has confirmed the first three cases of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus, the national Ministry of Health said.
"Yesterday [on Thursday], the results of the genome sequence test showed three positive cases of the Omicron strain," the ministry said on late Friday on Facebook.
Two of the patients have no symptoms of the disease, the third one has slight ones. All of them have been placed in isolation.
The World Health Organization during an emergency meeting on November 26 designated the new COVID-19 strain as a "variant of concern" and called it Omicron. The variant first originated in South Africa and is spreading around the world with more and more countries reporting on Omicron cases.
The spread of Omicron prompted many countries to close borders for foreigners arriving from Africa regardless of whether they hold a vaccination or recovery certificate or a negative coronavirus test.
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