In France, where Omicron pushes the wave of Covid infections, a new variant of the Coronavirus has been identified that has 46 mutations and is defined as a ‘distant relative’ of the mutation that has been dominating the scene for about a month. So far 12 cases have been identified starting with patient zero, a traveler from Cameroon.
“We found it at the beginning of December last year in 12 patients in the city of Forcalquier, a hundred kilometers from Marseille,” said Professor Philippe Colson, head of the unit that discovered it less than a month ago. but “it hasn’t spread rapidly since then,” he told the Daily Mail.
“The WHO has not yet given it a name, we have called it IHU and it has been deposited on the Gisaid scientific sharing network with the name B.1.640.2”, he continued, adding that today in France mainly the Omicron. The fear is that this may be more resistant to vaccines or be even more virulent than the previous ones.
According to the paper drawn up by the researchers, which has not yet appeared in scientific publications and partially disseminated by the Daily Mail, the variant would present the E484K mutation, associated with greater resistance to vaccines, and the N501Y mutation – already seen in the Alpha variant – which according to experts could promote greater transmissibility. In some ways, according to the identikit, the new variant would appear as a ‘distant relative’ of Omicron. “The observations show once again the unpredictability with which new variants of Sars-CoV-2 emerge and their origin from abroad. They testify to the difficulty of controlling their entry and their subsequent spread”, reads the paper.
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