Vietnam has detected a new hybrid of two variants of COVID in the Coronavirus pandemic News

The Vietnamese health minister said the new strain combines the previously identified variants in the UK and India, and laboratory tests suggest that hybrids may spread more easily than other versions of the virus.

Vietnamese authorities have detected a new variant of coronavirus, a hybrid strain found in India and the UK, an official said.

Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said at a government meeting on Saturday that scientists had found a new variant after examining the genetic structure of the virus that infected some of the latest patients.

“The news is that it is an Indian variant that originally had mutations corresponding to the UK variant,” he said.

Laboratory tests suggest the new strain may spread more easily than other versions of the virus, the minister said, adding that Vietnam will soon publish genome data for the newly identified variant.

After being successful in most of the virus last year, Vietnam has been experiencing an increase in infections since the end of April, accounting for more than half of the total 6,856 registered cases. So far, 47 people have been killed.

The Southeast Asian country previously detected seven virus variants: B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 – the variant first found in the UK, B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 – Detected in India.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified four variants of SARS-CoV-2 of global concern. These include variants that were first identified in India, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.

“So far, we have not yet conducted an assessment of the virus variant reported in Vietnam,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director at COVID-19, in an e-mailed statement.

“Our country office is working with the Vietnamese Ministry of Health and we look forward to more information soon.”

The WHO now understands that the variant detected in Vietnam was variant B.1.617.2, a variant first identified in India, possibly with an additional mutation, he said.

“However, we will provide more information as soon as we receive it,” Van Kerkhov added.

Long, Vietnam’s health minister, said the virus was spreading very quickly in the laboratory cultures of the new variant, probably explaining why so many new cases appeared in different parts of the country in such a short time.

The health ministry said at the meeting that the government was working to secure a dose of 10 million doses of the COVAX cost-sharing scheme, as well as a dose of 20 million for the Pfizer vaccine and 40 million for the Russian Sputnik V.

The country, with a population of about 98 million, has so far received 2.9 million doses and aims to secure 150 million this year.

According to the health minister, Vietnam hopes to achieve art immunity by the end of the year.