The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France in November hasn’t become much of a threat since it was first identified.
The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.”
The variant was also identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection — helmed by scientist Didier Raoult — nicknamed IHU,has remained in the region, while the latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion.
The news came as France saw its average daily caseload more than double in a week, with a record 271,686 IHU’s patient zero had just returned from Africa when scientists at IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseilles discovered he was infected with an atypical mutation of the virus. The vaccinated man “developed mild respiratory symptoms the day before diagnosis,” researchers wrote in their non-peer-reviewed article published in medRxiv.
It’s “too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this IHU variant based on these 12 cases,” they wrote in the article, which hasn’t been peer reviewed.
IHU Director Didier Raoult previously said the hospital’s infectious disease experts found seven coronavirus variants over the summer. Some scientists disputed the claims because the microbiologist had endorsed hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 cure. After an emergency use authorization in the first months of the pandemic, the FDA ruled there was no evidence that the drug was effective, and said its risks outweighed any potential benefits.
The WHO monitors multiple variants, and when it finds one may pose a significant risk, it declares it a “variant of concern.” At this time IHU is only under investigation.
It’s unknown if the variant is more contagious or dangerous than previous strains.
The variant has not been found in any other country.
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