The Ministry of Health does not have details about the child from the Republic of Moldova who tested positive for a new variant of COVID-19 (AY.4.2) at an airport in Israel. According to the Israeli press, the child arrived in Israel from Chisinau. Asked about this case, Svetlana Nicolăescu, secretary of state at the Ministry of Health, said she is confident that this case is being examined by specialists, IPN reports.

“The supervision method is based on sequencing. The laboratory of the National Public Health Agency was outfitted with such equipment and, according to our information, training on the use of this method is held this week, with the support of the WHO,” the secretary of state said in a news conference. Svetlana Nicolăescu noted that the vaccines against COVID-19 are also efficient against the new variants.

Alexei Ceban, coordinator of WHO Moldova Immunization Programs, told the same news conference that the risk grows proportionally – the higher is the number of COVID-19 cases in Moldova, the bigger is the risk of appearance of new variants. Suspected samples until now were submitted to EU accredited labs for confirming the presence of COVID-19 variants.

The two functionaries didn’t say when the last samples were sent to EU labs and when the laboratory in Moldova will start to use the sequencing method.

According to the Ministry of Health, 10-12% of the new COVID-19 cases are among children, which is twice more than during the previous wave of infections of this March.