New COVID-19 variant ‘IHU’ detected in France

Agencies | London

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com 

French scientists have identified a new COVID-19 variant with 46 mutations — more than even the highly infectious omicron variant.

‘Twelve people in southeastern France are known to have been infected by the variant, named “IHU” or B.1.640.2.

The first case was linked to a person with a travel history to Cameroon, researchers said in a paper published on medRxiv.

The person was fully vaccinated. ‘In their analysis, the authors found “46 mutations” which had not been spotted in other countries, nor labelled a variant under investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The authors of the paper said, “subsequent detection ... of three mutations in the spike gene to screen for variants ... did not correspond to the pattern of the Delta variant involved in all SARS-CoV-2 infections.”

 While the variant has more mutations than Omicron, scientists were quick to point out that this does not indicate that it is as or more infectious.

Scores of variants are being monitored at any one time by scientists worldwide, and most do not become “variants of concern,” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, wrote on Twitter.

“There are scores of new variants discovered all the time, but it does not necessarily mean they will be more dangerous,” he said, adding that the highly infectious Omicron variant could prove so virulent that it leaves no space for others to take over.