All passengers on any flight leaving South Africa must show a negative PCR test, including those who have been vaccinated.

Source: https://www.gov.za/covid-19/individuals-and-households/trave...

That’s confusingly worded and not enforced. I can confirm that fully vaccinated people flying from South Africa to the Netherlands did not need negative PCR tests until this week. You’re only required to fill in a declaration of vaccination status on the South African side.

Source: I did the trip in late October, and colleagues just returned in mid-November. None of us had to have negative PCR or any other tests.

On today’s episode of BBC World Service podcast they interviewed a canadian journalist who flew on one of those flights and she said that they as passangers were not asked to get tested before boarding.

She said she only tested herself since her following flight from AMS mandated it.

Ah thanks. That sorts out why the passengers were tested despite dutch regulations.

Note: that source states 13 of those 61 people are confirmed to have the Omikron variant.

And for completeness, the sequencing hasn't finished yet so that number may still rise.

Primary source for all figures mentioned so far: https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/coronavariant-omikron-tot-nu-toe-...

So 50 others were flying presumably infected with standard or unknown variants, but since they are vaccinated it would have gone unchecked?

How, is there a new test for Omicron variant? And is it available in the US?

No, it’s confirmed via sequencing. But the Omicron variant has a qPCR dropout like Alpha had, so you can identify likely cases from PCR tests and then use sequencing to verify.

And receiving a negative test does not rule out being positive. The false negative rates - even for pcr - are high double digits (and depend on the phase of the infection). Lots of good research proving it, and yet not widely publicized.