French health authorities announced Tuesday that a new variant of novel coronavirus has been found in a hospital in Brittany, France, which may evade nucleic acid tests.
French health authorities are investigating to assess the transmission and severity of the new strain and have reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Eight patients had typical symptoms of infection, but nucleic acid tests were negative
On February 22nd a cluster of infections was found inside a business in Brittany, according to French media reports.
Three weeks later, Lani Hospital confirmed 79 patients in the cluster, including eight who carried the novel coronavirus variant, which was first identified.
The 8 patients were negative for nucleic acid tests (PCR) of nasopharyngeal samples, although they had typical symptoms of infection.
Subsequently, after further genetic testing by Pasteur Institute, a new mutant novel coronavirus was found in the sample, which carried 9 mutations in S protein and other virus regions.
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Based on preliminary data, French health authorities have not yet been able to determine whether the new mutant strain is more contagious or will cause more severe infections.
France remains vigilant, has strengthened local testing, control and vaccination, and has initiated an in-depth investigation to assess the impact of the new mutation on the novel coronavirus’ infectious nature, severity and risk of immune escape.
As a precautionary measure, French health authorities have listed the strain as a “variant under investigation” and reported it to the WHO.
French epidemiologist Pascal Klepe told Le Figaro newspaper that there are two possible reasons for the failure of nucleoacid tests to pick up the new strain. One is that the virus is not detected in the upper respiratory tract, possibly because the infection has migrated rapidly to the lungs, meaning it is less contagious.
On the other hand, a negative nucleic acid test could mean that the virus has mutated enough to be difficult to detect, which would undermine the entire contact-tracking strategy.
If the new variant escapes detection, it means it could spread to other areas without being detected.
Philippe Frogel, a geneticist and endocrinologist at the Medical Centre in Lille, France, urges caution about the novel coronavirus variant found in Brittany.
He said in an interview with the French news radio, really determine the variation will be found coronavirus more contagious and lethal spent six months, this means that today is not in Brittany, found that under the light of strains in its amazing, does not test with nucleic acid testing for this need for specialized research, before the judge whether it is more risk and a lot of work to do science.
European countries entered the third wave of the epidemic
According to CCTV News, there has been a surge in cases of COVID-19 virus worldwide recently.
France’s prime minister said the country was in the third wave of the disease, Italy declared Rome and more than half of the region a “red zone” and imposed a “city lockdown”, and Germany’s disease control agency said the country was in the early stages of the third wave.
According to experts, the surge of cases in Central and Eastern European countries may be related to the loosening of control of the epidemic and the circulation of the new coronavirus.
World health introduces, at present the whole world is main popular 3 kinds of mutation novel coronavirus, appear respectively in England, South Africa, Brazil and Japan.
The three variants of the virus can, to varying degrees, weaken the ability of antibodies to “neutralize” the virus, or increase the risk of re-infection of novel coronavirus in patients who have recovered.
The results of the Oxford University study showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine has little protection against the novel coronavirus variant.