OREANDA-NEWS. In the Republic of South Africa (South Africa), special conditions are being created for the formation of new strains of coronavirus, since a significant part of the population of this country is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. This was announced on Tuesday, December 14, by the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova.

“Unfortunately, 20% are affected by the human immunodeficiency virus, in such an environment special conditions are created for the formation of new strains of coronavirus,” Popova said at the round table “On the development of the federal state sanitary and epidemiological control system” at the Federation Council.

According to her, of all the known variants of coronavirus today, three came to Russia from South Africa.

The head of the department also noted that Russian specialists, who began work in South Africa on Tuesday, must receive the necessary information to deal with the situation with COVID-19 "on the distant approaches."

Earlier that day, Popova spoke about the creation of a test system for detecting the Omicron strain.

Popova also said that patients with the Omicron strain who flew to Russia from African countries carry COVID-19 in a mild form. Of the 177 returning Russians, this variant of the virus was detected in 16 people.

On December 14, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that Omicron had not yet been sufficiently studied and posed a new threat. At the same time, the Kremlin spokesman stressed that all logistics are ready for extreme stress.