margarita25
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My copy and paste has gone out on my device, but see paragraph re: “The Biden administration...”, if someone could please bring that paragraph over, thank you.
My copy and paste has gone out on my device, but see paragraph re: “The Biden administration...”, if someone could please bring that paragraph over, thank you.
Yay for Science!The Biden administration has pledged a “down payment” of $200 million to ramp up surveillance, an infusion intended to make it possible to analyze 25,000 patient samples each week for virus variants. It’s an ambitious goal: The country was sequencing just a few hundred samples each week in December, then scaling up to about 9,000 per week as of March 27.
This report is from March 17 but I just heard about the Breton variant for the first time on the radio this morning. (There is debate about whether travellers from France coming into Ireland should have to go into mandatory hotel quarantine given the severe Covid situation there currently.)
Latest Covid-19 Variant Discovered In France Isn’t Detected By Standard PCR Tests
A new variant of the novel coronavirus has been identified in the French region of Brittany. On Monday evening, the French Ministry of Health put out a statement that said the mutation was found by way of genomic sequencing in a cluster of infections in a hospital in the town of Lannion. Eight of 79 Covid-19 patients turned out to be carriers of the new variant, nicknamed “le variant breton.” Initially they tested negative with gold-standard PCR tests, despite presenting with typical symptoms of Covid-19. But later, coronavirus infection was confirmed with analysis of blood samples and tissue in the respiratory system. All 8 patients have since died.
(...)
What’s remarkable about this particular mutation is that the novel coronavirus may have already evolved in such a way as to bypass detection by conventional PCR tests. Last month, Finnish researchers also discovered a new variant that is undetected by at least one standard PCR test, though evidently not all conventional PCR tests, as appears to be the case with the new variant found in France. As a result, the World Health Organization has assigned the latest variant to the category “variants under investigation.”
The announcement came as France and most of the rest of Europe battle a resurgence in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, driven in part by the B.1.1.7 variant which has become dominant throughout the continent.
(More at link)
Latest Covid-19 Variant Discovered In France Isn’t Detected By Standard PCR Tests
I know! It's just nightmarish
That is just the worst news! This virus is always one step ahead of everyone. Now it can bypass standard testing.
I know! It's just nightmarish![]()
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