HANOI — Vietnam health minister
Nguyen Thanh Long said on
Saturday the country has detected a new variant of the coronavirus, a mix of
the Indian and UK
COVID-19 variants that spreads quickly by air, online
newspaper VnExpress reported.
اضافة اعلان
After successfully containing the coronavirus for most of
last year, Vietnam is now battling an outbreak that is spreading more quickly.
Nearly 3,600 people have been infected in 31 of its 63
cities and provinces since late April, accounting for more than half of the
country's total infections.
"After running gene sequencing on newly detected
patients, we have discovered a new variant that is a mix of India and UK
ones," Nguyen Thanh Long was quoted as saying.
"More specifically, it is an Indian variant with
mutations that originally belong to the UK variant," he said. VnExpress
quoted Long as saying Vietnam would announce the newly discovered variant to
the world soon.
Vietnam had previously reported seven virus variants:
B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 (the UK variant), B.1.351, A.23.1 and
B.1.617.2 (the Indian variant).
Laboratory cultures of the new variant, which is much more transmissible
that the previously known types, revealed that the virus replicated itself very
quickly, explaining why so many new cases appeared in different locations in a
short period, Long was quoted as saying.
The Southeast Asian country has registered 6,396 coronavirus
cases so far, with 47 deaths.
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