South Africa on Thursday confirmed the detection of a new variant of the coronavirus, identified as B.1.1.529, which has multiple mutations.
This Friday the Belgian authorities announced that a case of the new South African variant of COVID-19 was detected on November 22. However, the Minister of Public Health, Frank Vandenbroucke, asked that "do not panic."

The infected patient is an unvaccinated young adult woman who developed symptoms eleven days after traveling to Egypt through Turkey and who claims to have had no contact with people from southern Africa, the National Reference Laboratory reported.
The woman appears to have had no high-risk contacts outside of her home and no member of her family developed symptoms so far, added the National Reference Laboratory, which is conducting a comprehensive investigation.

At the same press conference at which Vandenbroucke reported this case, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that his government plans to introduce new restrictions on inbound travel from South Africa.

"We are activating a procedure in this regard," De Croo said briefly.

This will mean a mandatory 10-day quarantine for those who return from that region and reside in Belgium, and an entry “ban” for non-residents, without specifying which countries will be affected, he explained.

South Africa confirmed on Thursday the detection of a new variant of the coronavirus, identified as B.1.1.529, which has multiple mutations and which has raised "concern" among specialists, although its impact has yet to be studied.

In total, so far, cases of this variant have been confirmed in South Africa, Hong Kong (in a traveler from the African nation) and neighboring Botswana, as well as Israel.

B.1.1.529 has more than thirty mutations and some of them are, according to South African scientists, cause for concern due to its possible impact on transmissibility and its potential ability to evade immunity or previous protection.