In early December, Italy said it had detected its first case of the new Omicron strain of Covid-19 in a traveler arriving from Mozambique earlier this month. A top laboratory “sequenced the genome from the positive sample of a patient coming from Mozambique”, the national health institute said in a statement. On December 3, Italy banned entry to all travelers who had been in  seven countries in southern Africa in the past fortnight after the new variant was discovered there. It also suspended flights from the region. Health authorities were contacting passengers who had arrived in Italy in recent days from areas where the variant is thought to have spread, news agency Ansa reported. Security sources at Rome Fiumicino Airport said “airline companies are required to deliver passenger lists and these are picked up directly, to then be subjected to the usual health checks.” Italy has been one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in terms of fatalities with more than 133,000 deaths reported since February 2020. It has been recording more than 10,000 new cases daily in recent days. 

A dicembre, l'Italia ha avuto la prima persona contagiata con Omicron, un ceppo genetico del Covid. La persona è arrivata dal Mozambico. Di conseguenza, l’Italia ha vietato l'ingresso a tutti i passeggeri da sette Paesi africani nei 14 giorni dopo aver scoperto Omicron dal sud d’Africa. I voli da questi Paesi sono stati sospesi immediatamente. L'autorità sanitaria negli aeroporti fanno controlli medici per ogni passeggero,  ma i passeggeri provenienti dai paesi dove la variante Omicron si è diffusa rapidamente rischiano di non essere ammessi in Italia. Dall’inizio del Covid, l’Italia è stata uno dei primi Paesi contaggiari con più di 133.000 morti dal febbraio 2020.