Biz Health 11 Jan 2022
"A new variant of the Covid-19 virus has recently come to light.
Named IHU, the new B.1.640.2 variant has so far infected 12 people living in southeastern France, five adults and seven children.
The IHU variant is named after researchers at the IHU Méditerranée Hospital based in Versailles in France.
It was initially discovered back in November and the person who was detected as having the virus had a recent travel history to Cameroon, western Africa.
There have been studies on this variant, but as it's still recently a new discovery, these studies have not yet been peer reviewed.
What we know
What we do know about the virus is:
* The IHU strain of Covid has 46 mutations in comparison to the Omicron variant which has 37.
* Experts caution, however, that just because a new variant had been discovered, that did not necessarily mean IHU will prove as infectious as other strains, including Omicron.
The WHO incident manager on Covid-19, Abdi Mahamud said the variant was "on their radar". He has said the number and cases of IHU could pick up, and that WHO will notify the public if the virus is deemed a concern."
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