A Department of Health expert on Saturday said that the new coronavirus variant recently detected in Japan is unique to the Philippines and has already been assigned a designation.
On Friday, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) said a new COVID-19 variant was detected from a traveler from the Philippines on February 25.
The NIID said the variant contains N501Y and E484K, which are two mutations of concern that were detected in Central Visayas last month.
During state-run PTV’s Laging Handa briefing, DOH technical working group focusing on new coronavirus variants expert-member Anna Ong-Lim said that the Philippine Genome Center shared data about the 85 cases with E484K and N5016 mutations to a global reporting system —Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak Lineages (PANGOLIN).
“We are waiting for them to let us know if this is unique to the Philippines or has been discovered in other countries,” Ong-Lim said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“They came back to us and told us that this is a new variant and they are assigning it the P.3 [variant], designation of P.3,” Ong-Lim said.
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