Vietnam Detects New Highly Transmissible Variant

The Washington Post reports:

Vietnam’s Health Ministry announced Saturday that it had detected a highly transmissible new variant of the coronavirus that has helped fuel a recent wave of infections in the country.

Genetic sequencing indicated that the new variant was a mix of the coronavirus strains first detected in the United Kingdom and India, said Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long, according to the VnExpress newspaper.

The minister said the new variant was particularly contagious via air and viral cultures have revealed it replicates extremely quickly, the newspaper reported. “The new variant is very dangerous,” Long said in a statement.

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Vietnam,??one of the world’s #COVID19 containment success stories, detects highly contagious new coronavirus variant as infections surge, by @katerinareports https://t.co/zs7F7EONMX via @washingtonpost #GlobalHealth

— André Picard (@picardonhealth) May 29, 2021