India-UK hybrid virus found

Vietnam to announce new variant to the world soon, says report

THE country’s health minister Nguyen Thanh Long said vietnam 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.

After successfully containing the novel coronavirus for most of last year, the South-East Asian nation 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 the india and UK ones,” Long was quoted as saying yesterday.

“More specifically, it is an indian variant with mutations that originally belonged to the UK variant,” he said.

vnExpress quoted Long as saying that 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. Laboratory cultures of the new variant, which is much more transmissible than 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.

vietnam has registered 6,396 Covid-19 cases so far, with 47 deaths.