While the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic seems to be slowing down with less than 2 lakhs cases being reported every day, a new variant of the virus has been found. Clearly, the virus never fails to amaze us with its unpredictable nature.
Vietnam has discovered a new variant of the COVID-19 virus, which is a hybrid of the strains first found in India and the UK.
The variant is yet not recorded by the GISAID, the global initiative focused on sharing the information about the virus and the new variant yet does not have a name.
The health minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Thanh Long did not disclose the number of cases that have been reported but called the new variant “very dangerous”.
The Southeast Asian country had previously detected seven virus variants – B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.17 known as the UK variant and B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 known as the Indian variant.
Here is all that is known about the new hybrid COVID-19 variant in Vietnam:
– The variant has combined characteristics of the two existing variants that were found in India and the UK.
– The variant is more easily transmissible than the previously known variants.
– It spreads quickly in the air.
– The virus concentration in the throat increases rapidly and spreads strongly to the surrounding environment.
– Vietnam would soon publish genome data about the newly identified variant.
– The laboratory cultures of the variant have shown that the virus can replicate itself very quickly, thus leading to a quick spike in the number of COVID cases in different parts of Vietnam within a short period of time.
– The World Health Organisation has classified variants found in India, South Africa, Brazil and the UK as “variants of global concern”.
Viruses mutate all the time and most variants are inconsequential but some can make it more contagious.
Since the origin of the COVID-19, thousand of mutations have been detected till now.
There is no existing evidence that any mutation of the coronavirus can cause much more serious illness for vast majority of people.
Just like the original version, the risk remains high for elderly people and people with comorbidities.
But the new variant being more infectious and equally dangerous may lead to more deaths in an unvaccinated population.
Vietnam has reported a spike in the number of cases in the past few weeks. So far 6700 cases have been reported since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Of those, more than half have been reported since late April this year. 47 COVID related deaths have been reported in Vietnam, as per the data by the John Hopkins University.
