Tag Archives: variant

The global health agency met on Friday to name the B.1.1.529 strain and decided to classify it as a “variant of concern,” rather than the less serious designation “variant of interest.” The Delta variant, which caused surging Covid-19 infections around the globe after it was first detected in late December …

Speaking on Friday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told a press conference that the latest wave of coronavirus should be called Covid-21, as panic over the ‘Nu’ variant grips Europe. You could say that this is Covid-21 instead of Covid-19: it is three times more infectious than the original …

“We are currently analyzing two suspicious samples,” Marc Van Ranst, a leading virologist whose laboratory works closely with Belgium’s public health body Sciensano, said on Twitter. The virologist elaborated on his remark to Reuters, explaining the samples were described as “suspicious” since they were not the Delta variant, which has …

In mid-August, Japan experienced a peak in Covid-19 infections, recording over 23,000 new cases per day. Now the metric is just around 170, with deaths attributed to the disease mostly remaining in single digits this month. The decline has been attributed by many to high vaccination rates, public acceptance of …

Researchers looked at over 600 people in the UK over the course of a year for the study, done by Imperial College London and the UK Health Security Agency (HSA) and published this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.  “Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and …

A team from Germany looked at the rare A.30 variant that was first recorded in Tanzania and later detected in several patients in Angola and Sweden this spring. They compared the mutation to the Beta and Eta variants. Beta was chosen because it has “the highest level” of resistance to …

The WHO announced the classification in the organization’s weekly pandemic bulletin on Tuesday, several months after the Mu strain was first identified in Colombia. “The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” the WHO said, adding that “preliminary data showed it has the …

The team of Russian researchers analyzed the data from nearly 14,000 patients who had tested positive for the virus and were referred for a lung scan at two outpatient clinics in the country’s second most populous city between July 3 and August 9. The study has shown that full vaccination is 81% …

Alexander Gintzburg, who heads up Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, told Interfax on Thursday that a modified version of Sputnik V had been created. “There is already a vaccine design in the refrigerator,” the scientist revealed. However, he said, despite a number of researchers and pharmaceutical companies showing interest in including the …

Those who remain unvaccinated, Fauci claimed in a Sunday interview with MSNBC, are responsible for the coronavirus mutating, which has led to the delta variant, which health officials have continuously warned is partly behind the mass rise in cases and could lead to another surge in the fall. “There’s a …