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'Zimbabwe Hasn’t Confirmed Presence Of COVID-19 Lambda Variant Yet'

2 years agoWed, 07 Jul 2021 14:34:23 GMT
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'Zimbabwe Hasn’t Confirmed Presence Of COVID-19 Lambda Variant Yet'

The Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) says Zimbabwean scientists have not detected the Lambda variant as yet, a highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 strain that was first reported in Peru.

The Lambda variant is now circulating in South Africa, according to Professor Barry Schoub who made the revelations during an interview on Tuesday on the POWER FM Breakfast show.

In an interview with HealthTimes, MoHCC spokesperson, Donald Mujiri said the Lambda variant was yet to be confirmed by local scientists. He said:

What happens is that our scientists go on the ground whenever we classify a place as a COVID-19 hotspot.

They go and take samples and run tests to determine which variants will be dominating that particular area.

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At the moment the strain that is more dominant in the country is the B167.2 that was dominant in India.

Mujaji added that local scientists were still carrying out genomic sequencing to determine the number of variants present in Zimbabwe. He said:

We trust our Genomic Sequencing. When that case was reported in Kwekwe from a returnee who had arrived from India, our team of scientists went there and confirmed that indeed it was the variant from India.

There is not something we can hide, this is COVID-19 and if we detected a new variant detected we will announce it so as to ensure that our people know what they are dealing with.

Originally identified in Peru last year, the Lambda variant is responsible for 82% of new COVID cases in Peru over the past two months.

About a third of cases in Chile over the same time frame was also caused by the Lambda strain, and the U.K. is among the countries that have seen a smattering of cases.

In mid-June, it was first deemed a variant of interest by the World Health Organization (WHO) — a designation given to a variant that may be more transmissible than the original strain.  The other variants of interest are Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, and Kappa.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta are considered variants of concern by WHO. Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta originally were detected in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and India respectively.

More: Health Times

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