RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A group of researchers identified a new strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, one of the most affected regions by the pandemic in Brazil, scientific sources reported on Tuesday, December 22th.
However, these sources failed to state whether the new detected strain is more transmissible or more aggressive than those already known in Brazil, one of the most impacted countries by the pandemic after the United States and India.
According to research conducted by the National Laboratory of Scientific Computing (LNCC), linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology in partnership with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the new variant was first detected last October in the capital city of Rio de Janeiro.
The researchers stressed that, for now, the new variant is “partially restricted” to the city, which concentrates the highest number of cases and deaths from Covid-19 in the region, but alerted to a potential spread throughout the state and, consequently, other areas of Brazil.
“The significant increase in the prevalence of this strain raises concerns over public health management and the need for genomic surveillance during the second wave of infections,” the scientists noted in the report, prepared under the coordination of researcher Ana Tereza Vasconcelos.
The new strain was detected through the genetic sequencing of the B.1.1.28 lineage, which has been circulating in Brazil since the start of the year, and it is estimated that this variant has emerged in July. The researchers analyzed 180 SARS-CoV-2 genomes and identified five “unique mutations,” which “have emerged and rapidly spread”.
The scientists said there is also no “evidence” that the variant could reduce the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines just beginning to be distributed worldwide.
The state of Rio de Janeiro, after São Paulo, is the region in Brazil with the highest absolute number of deaths from the disease, with almost 25,000 fatalities, and the sixth with the highest number of confirmed cases (407,575).
In the whole country, with a population of some 210 million inhabitants, the coronavirus has already killed over 187,000 people and infected 7.2 million.
In recent weeks, Brazil has experienced a new outbreak of the pathogen, which forced several states and municipalities to tighten restrictive measures in anticipation of the end-of-year celebrations, which have even been cancelled in several locations.
In recent weeks, as global hopes increased with the approval of several of the most advanced vaccines, British authorities alerted to a new highly contagious variant of the coronavirus circulating in England.
Days later, in South Africa, a similar variant of the virus emerged which, according to the scientists who detected it, shares one of the mutations observed in the British variant. This virus has been detected in up to 90 percent of samples analyzed in South Africa since mid-November.