A coronavirus strain 95% similar to UK’s new strain has been detected in returning passengers in Karachi, announced the Sindh health department on Tuesday.
The health department of Sindh had tested 12 passengers returning from the UK for COVID-19. Six of them tested positive for the coronavirus. Three people among the six positive “showed the new variant of the Covid virus in the first phase” after genotyping.
Genotyping is a laboratory process that detects genetic changes in the pathogen–the virus in this case.
There was a 95% match with the new virus variant from the UK. The results were released on Tuesday morning. The health department has said these samples will go through another phase of genotyping.
The patients have been isolated and their contact tracing is ongoing.
New variants of the virus have so far been detected in UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India, Lebanon, Netherlands, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
