WARSAW, May 6 (Reuters) – Poland has detected its first three cases of the Brazilian variant of the coronavirus, the health minister said on Thursday, as the European nation starts to emerge from a third wave of the pandemic.

Poland tightened quarantine rules in May for people travelling from Brazil, India and South Africa after cases of an Indian variant of the virus were detected in the Warsaw and Katowice areas.

The three cases of the Brazilian variant were detected in Poland’s southern Silesia region, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said.

Poland has so far reported 2,818,378 coronavirus cases and 68,993 deaths.

Poland reopened shopping centres in May, the beginning of a gradual unfreezing of the economy that will see restaurants, hotels and schools reopening at different points this month.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Edmund Blair)

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