By Peter Sibon
KUCHING, Feb 13: Director of Sarawak Health Department Dr Chin Zin Hing has confirmed that two new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been detected in the State.
The two cases were highlighted by Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah on his official Facebook post.
However, there was currently no evidence to show that the B.1.470 and B.1.160 variants from the Sarawak had a higher level of infectivity.
The two cases were based on the report by Unimas whereby the first variant, B.1.470, is likely to have come from Indonesia, which has a 67.7 per cent similar strain, although its true origins had yet to be determined.
It was reported that the virus has the D614G mutation, which is found in almost all of the SARS-CoV-2 strains that have been reported.
It has been reported that the B.1.160 variant has been commonly found in European countries since July 2020 starting from France (11.2 per cent) and is now dominated by Denmark (28 per cent), Switzerland (15.4 per cent) and the United Kingdom (UK) (17.2 per cent), which has spike mutations D614G and S477N. – DayakDaily
