The French government announced Tuesday (March 16) that a new variant of the Chinese communist virus (COVID-19) has been discovered in a public hospital in the Brittany region in the northwest of the country. Preliminary analysis revealed that the variant appears to be able to evade normal PCR nucleic acid detection.
According to Le Parisien, a public hospital in the coastal city of Lannion diagnosed 79 cases of COVID-19 infection on March 13, including 8 cases with the new variant of the virus. Of the eight cases, seven patients showed negative PCR nucleic acid test results.
The French health authorities noted Monday evening that the infected patients had typical symptoms of CCP pneumonia, but PCR nucleic acid tests on throat swabs were negative, requiring serum antibody tests or nucleic acid tests on more in-depth respiratory samples to detect.
Analysis by the Pasteur Institute in France showed that the variant carried nine mutations in the region encoding the S protein, as well as in other viral regions.
The French health authorities also said that researchers are currently investigating whether the mutations in this new variant of the virus are the reason why detection has become difficult and assessing whether the new strain is more transmissible and more lethal.
To date, there are three strains of CCP virus variants that are of great concern worldwide, appearing in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan. Recently, a new strain “Fin-796H”, which combines the British and South African variants, has been discovered in Finland.
Preliminary research at the University of Helsinki’s Institute of Biotechnology found that the “Fin-796H” strain does not appear to belong to any known clade of CCP virus evolution, and that it cannot be detected by any of the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved nucleic acid This strain cannot be detected by any WHO-approved nucleic acid detection method.
Ilkka Julkunen, a professor of virology at the university, told the media that there is no clear evidence that this strain is more likely to spread, and it is not known whether a vaccine would be effective against it.
Previously, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) also discovered a combination of the British variant “B.1.1.7” and the California variant “B.1.429 A combination of the British variant “B.1.1.7” and the California variant “B.1.429” has been discovered. Scientists fear that this combined strain will evolve new variants of the virus that are more infectious and resistant to drugs, thus allowing the pandemic to enter a new phase.
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