A “very dangerous” hybrid Covid-19 variant detected in Vietnam could lead to a “steep rise” in cases in the country and beyond.
Authorities in Vietnam have detected a new coronavirus strain that is a combination of the Indian and UK Covid-19 variants and spreads quickly by air.
Fears are mounting that the new hybrid is fuelling Vietnam’s worst outbreak of the pandemic.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said Vietnam would soon publish genome data of the newly identified variant, which he said was more transmissible than the previously known types.
“That the new one is an Indian variant with mutations that originally belong to the UK variant is very dangerous,” he told a government meeting, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters.
Abhishek Rimal, the Regional Coordinator for Public Health in Asia Pacific, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the Telegraph that initial reports of the new strain were worrying, though the full genomic sequence of the potential hybrid remains unclear.
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“What we understand from the field and some of the epidemiologists from the country is that they do suspect it will have even higher transmissibility than the original strain or any of the variants,” he said.
“If confirmed, we could see a steep rise of Covid-19 in Vietnam and even beyond around Southeast Asia.”
Today, Vietnam’s aviation authority said it will resume incoming international flights to its capital Hanoi and business hub Ho Chi Minh City effective immediately, after a few days of suspension due to Covid-19.
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The country had initially banned incoming international flights to Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport for a week starting Monday and to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat airport until June 14.
The aviation authority did not say why it was resuming flights earlier than planned, but most of the Covid-19 cases in the current outbreak are locally transmitted, not from international passengers.
Vietnam’s business hub Ho Chi Minh City said it would begin social distancing measures for 15 days starting from May 31 in an effort to curb the spread of Covid, the government said on Sunday.
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State-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported Ho Chi Minh City authorities would conduct Covid-19 tests city-wide with testing capacity at 100,000 samples per day.
The health ministry told the meeting the government was working to secure 10 million vaccine doses under the COVAX cost-sharing scheme, as well as a further 20 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine and 40 million of Russia’s Sputnik V.
The country of about 98 million people has so far received 2.9 million doses and aims to secure 150 million this year.