QCOSTARICA – The Costa Rican Institute for Research and Education in Nutrition and Health, (INCIENSA), confirmed 14 new cases of the Omicron Variant of Concern (VOC) of SARS-CoV-2, for a total of 18 confirmed cases in the country.
Two of these patients correspond to contacts of the first case confirmed by Ómicron on December 19.
The most recent cases correspond to 12 Costa Ricans and two foreigners (Colombian and Italian nationality). The age range is between eight and 58 years old and the distribution by sex is nine women and five men.
According to the information available accompanying the samples, two of the affected persons presented a history of recent travel to the United States.
The cases are distributed in four provinces:
- San José: cases were detected in the cantons of Goicoechea, Moravia, Curridabat and the Central canton.
- Alajuela: cases were detected in the Central canton and in Grecia
- Guanacaste: in the cantons of La Cruz and Liberia
- Heredia: in the Central canton.
The Ministry of Health reports that the patients had not required hospitalization until the moment of the sample collection, ten of them were symptomatic, among the symptoms, muscle and joint pain, headache, fever, cough and nasal congestion.
INCIENSA, with the support of the national network of laboratories, will continue to carry out the genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Costa Rica in order to keep the health authorities and the general population informed about the circulation of the variants. of the virus in the country.
