NEW COVID VARIANT DISCOVERED

A new Covid-19 variant namely C.1.2 are being investigated by researchers. This was announced by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) as they reported that the identification of this potential variant.

Professor Penny Moore said that the C.1.2. was at a low frequency currently – between 2% and 3% of infections – but this was gradually increasing month by month and that it was for this reason that they were watching the situation closely, reports EWN.

“It is doing to some extent what Delta did at the beginning of the second wave. It’s impossible, it’s crystal ball stuff and we’ve learned not to predict what variants do. We are watching it carefully, we are counting the number of genomes, we are counting where the genomes are.”

Dr Jinal Bhiman, the principal medical scientist at the NICD confirmed that although the C.1.2 variant is of concern as it had mutations that were shared with other variants, it’s not a major concern at this stage.

“Yes, it is a variant but it is not yet a variant of concern or a variant of interest but it has the potential to become one. It will really only become one when it is more widely dispersed.”

Image credit: DNA India