NEW MEXICO - In a press conference, José Ernesto Ramírez admitted that this mutation, first detected in the country in October, “may have greater transmissibility”, although he underlined that it is not “appropriate at this point to call it a new Mexican variant”.
The discovered strain is B.1.1.222, with a T478K mutation, he said.
“We can make a specific request to nominate [esta variante] somehow, with a particular name, but it is not appropriate at this point to call it a new Mexican variant “, he insisted.
The official added that the “significant increase” in the circulation of this mutation in the country is similar to what other variants, such as those that were detected in the United Kingdom, Brazil or South Africa, registered in these countries.
Indre’s director of Molecular Research added that this mutation “has also been found in Canada, the United States and some countries in Europe and Africa”.
“What we are saying is that it is what we are finding most often here. It is a fact that we have to give to those responsible for epidemiology so that they can start to develop strategies “, he said.
Ramírez stated that the new majority lineage has “a pair of very important mutations” that “could have an impact” on public health, taking into account the way in which it has increased its distribution among the population.
“Certainly it can have greater transmissibility. That is why we suggest conducting virological, epidemiological and clinical studies, to see whether or not it has an impact on public health,” he said.
Mexico has recorded 877 deaths from covid-19 in the last 24 hours, now accumulating 183,692 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official data.
In the last 24 hours, the country diagnosed 8,642 new cases, raising the total number of infections to 2,069,370.
Mexico is the third country in the world with the most deaths caused by the new coronavirus, behind the United States and Brazil, and the 13th in number of infections, according to the independent count from the American University Johns Hopkins.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 2,498,003 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 112.5 million cases of infection, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 16,185 people died from 801,746 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
TIME24NEWS.
