Santa Clara, December 2 (RHC)-- Health authorities said Wednesday that the infection of a Cuban citizen who recently returned from South Africa with the Ómicron strain of the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus has not yet been proven.

Dr. Neil Reyes, director of the Provincial Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology, told the press that the patient who tested positive for Covid-19, is admitted to the Manuel Fajardo hospital in the central city of Santa Clara, and his sample has been sent to the Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute, in Havana.

"The certification of the sample takes four or five days in its process in the laboratory to obtain the result, so the information circulating in social media networks that the patient is a carrier of the Omicron strain, is fake," attested Dr. Reyes.

"The patient arrived in the municipality of Placetas on November 25 from South Africa and tested positive for Covid-19 after the PCR test, but that does not mean that he is infected with the Omicron strain," he alleged.

Dr. Reyes pointed out that only the results of the National Reference Laboratory could determine whether or not it is the new variant of the coronavirus called Omicron, which has been classified as high risk by the World Health Organization.