UK's new strain of coronavirus detected in Sindh

KARACHI (92 News) - Sindh Health Department on Tuesday announced that the UK's new strain of coronavirus has been detected in three samples taken from passengers who recently returned from Britain to Karachi.

According to the reports, the health department of Sindh had tested 12 passengers returning from the UK for COVID-19. Six of them tested positive for the coronavirus. Three people among the six positive “showed the new variant of the Covid virus in the first phase” after genotyping.

The new strain, referred to by some experts as the B.1.17 lineage, is not the first variant of COVID-19 pandemic, but it is said to be up to 70% more transmissible than the previously dominant strain in the UK.

The press statement said the genotyping shows it to be a 95% match of the new strain initially detected in the UK. The authorities have begun tracing contacts of the patients and placing them under isolation.

The patients have been isolated and their contact tracing is ongoing.

It is pertinent to mention here that new strain of the virus have so far been detected in UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India, Lebanon, Netherlands, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.