HANOI – Vietnam has detected a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) variant that appears to be a combination of the Indian and the United Kingdom variants and can spread quickly by air.
Vietnam’s Health minister Nguyen Thanh Long described the latest mutation on Saturday as “very dangerous.”
Viruses mutate all the time and most variants are inconsequential, but some can make a virus more contagious.
Since COVID-19 was first identified in January 2020, thousands of mutations have been detected.
Nguyen said the new hybrid variant was more transmissible than previously known versions, especially in the air.
He said it was discovered after running tests on newly-detected patients, online newspaper VnExpress reported.(BBC)
