Bureau Report
KARACHI: Pakistan on Tuesday reported its first confirmed cases of a new coronavirus strain detected in the United Kingdom earlier this year.
According to the Sindh health department, 12 samples of UK returnees were taken for genotyping out of which six were positive and three showed the new variant of the Covid virus in the first phase. “The genotyping showed 95 per cent match of the new variant from the UK. These samples will go through another phase of genotyping,” said Meeran Yousuf, spokesperson for the Sindh health department. “Meanwhile, the contact tracing of these patients is in process and their contacts are also being isolated,” she said.
The World Health Organisation tweeted earlier this month that it was “in close contact with UK officials on the new #COVID19 virus variant” and promised to update governments and the public as more is learned.
The new strain was identified in southeastern England in September and has been spreading in the area ever since, a WHO official told the BBC. “What we understand is that it does have increased transmissibility, in terms of its ability to spread,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19.
