Hanoi: Vietnam has discovered a new COVID-19 variant, claimed to be a combination of the strains first found in India and Britain, health officials confirmed Saturday.
“We have discovered a new hybrid variant from the… strains,” found in India and the UK, Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told a national meeting on the pandemic Saturday, according to state media.
“The characteristic of this strain is that it spreads quickly in the air. The concentration of virus in the throat fluid increases rapidly and spreads very strongly to the surrounding environment.”
Vietnam’s Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology said in a statement Saturday that its scientists had detected gene mutations in four out of 32 patient samples through gene sequencing.
