Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long announced the discovery in the country of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which combines mutations originally found in India and the UK.
“In particular, this is the Indian version with mutations that originally belonged to the British version,” the minister explained in statements quoted by the official media.
The new variant was discovered after examining the virus genome sequence in some new infections in Indochina, the minister explained, saying it may be more infectious and resistant than previous variants.
Vietnam has recorded its most serious wave of infections in recent weeks, reaching a record number of new daily cases, worrying authorities who have so far managed to contain the spread of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Since the start of the fourth wave on April 27, Vietnam has reported about 3,600 infections in its population, for a total of 6,396 cases since the start of the pandemic, leading to 47 deaths.
Vietnam’s success in containing the spread of the virus has not been replicated in the vaccination campaign, which is progressing slowly, with just over one million Vietnamese being vaccinated out of a population of 96 million.
The communist regime in Hanoi limited itself to pointing out the problems of supplying the international market in order to justify the slow procurement of vaccines.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 3,513,088 deaths worldwide, resulting in more than 168.9 million infections, according to a report by French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus discovered at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
