Two German tower blocks in quarantine after Indian variant found

BERLIN - Residents of two tower blocks in western Germany have been put under quarantine after a woman was diagnosed with the infectious Indian variant of COVID-19, an official said on Tuesday.

Several of the 179 residents have since been tested for the coronavirus, public health officer Marcus Kowalczyk said, adding that sequencing the samples to establish if they too had the Indian variant would take several days. Authorities around Europe are on high alert for the variant, which caused devastation in India before establishing a foothold in Britain. Infectious variants are a major threat to governments' ability to contain the pandemic.