Vietnam finds new virus variant, hybrid of India, UK strains

Vietnam has found a new strain of COVID-19 that resembles those in India and Britain. The Vietnamese health department announced on Saturday that the new COVID-19 variant combines characteristics of strains found in India and Britain. A gene sequence analysis of confirmed cases reported in Vietnam discovered that at least four patients got infected with the new type of the virus, according to Vietnamese local news agency VnExpress.

The Vietnamese health department found in a cell culturing experiment in lab settings that the new variant has a short viral replication cycle and outperforms other new species in terms of infectiousness. Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long explained that the new variant is an air-borne virus that spreads like wildfire, attributing the advent of the new variant to the uptick of new COVID-19 cases mushrooming domestically. 　

According to international stats website Worldometer, around 10 new COVID-19 cases were found a day in Vietnam until April but as many as 369 cases were reported on Tuesday alone. The aggregated number of COVID-19 confirmed patients in Vietnam rose from 3,000 or so early this month to 6,856 on Saturday.


jyr0101@donga.com