The Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid confirmed this Monday the first case of the omicron variant in Spain.

https://elpais.com/espana/madrid/2021-11-29/espana-confirma-el-primer-caso-de-la-variante-omicron-en-madrid.html

ISABEL VALDES PABLO LINDE
Madrid - 29 NOV 2021 - 11:48Updated:NOV 29, 2021 - 1:28 PM EST
The Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid confirmed this Monday the first case of the omicron variant in Spain. The microbiology service of the center has reported that it is a traveler from South Africa and that the patient "is fine". The 51-year-old man returned from that country this Sunday, November 28, after stopping off in Amsterdam, he has "mild symptoms" and is "in isolation, in quarantine," according to the Madrid Ministry of Health in a statement. Catalonia, for its part, has detected two suspected cases of carrying the new lineage of the virus at the Barcelona airport, two travelers also from South Africa who are kept in isolation. The Generalitat hopes to confirm it tomorrow, Tuesday.
The General Directorate of Public Health, adds the Community, "maintains the epidemiological surveillance of the close contacts of the flight that landed in Madrid from the Dutch capital." This infection was detected by screening with an antigen test at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport; and the sequencing has been determined this Monday through "an ultra-fast procedure" that allows the result to be obtained on the same day.

Fernando Lázaro, a microbiologist at the La Paz hospital in Madrid, explains that for these cases there is an emergency sequencing procedure using a device called MinION: “It is a portable device capable of completing the process in less than 24 hours. It is not useful for massive sequencing and it is somewhat more imprecise than the usual one, which is slower, but it is worth more than enough to identify a variant in a specific case ”, he points out.

 

Seq at GISAID

hCoV-19/Spain/MD-HGUGM-5821169/2021