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Nine mutations regarding the Chinese strain of Covid-19 revealed this Tuesday a study by the Teaching and Research Center of the University of Magallanes, which was developed in that area of the extreme south of Chile.
The Magallanes Region, which has only 1% of the national population, has established itself as one of the most affected by the pandemic and still maintains the highest incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants.
“Some of these changes were already described, but individually and not as a whole. That is, some mutations that we found had already appeared elsewhere, but at a very low frequency and did not cause the problems that they caused in Magellan”, declared the medical technologist and investigated from the School of Medicine of the University of Magallanes, Jorge González.
“What we have here is a unique variant in the world with clear adaptation advantages”added the specialist.
According to the study, it was these changes in the virus that generated an explosive increase in cases in the southern region of Chile, reporting more than 200 daily infected on more than three occasions, being an area where just over 160,000 people live.
At the beginning of October of this year, Santiago showed similar numbers of infections to the Magallanes Region, despite the fact that about 8 million people live in the Metropolitan Region.
“I think that what they are analyzing in London is looking for a cause and the most likely is that they will reach the same conclusion that we reached, that the second wave has a different behavior, since there is a different behavior of the population, a relaxation of preventive measures and a difficulty in complying with quarantines “, declared the regional ministerial secretary of Health of Magallanes, Eduardo Castillo, when asked about the similarity of the case with the mutations identified in the United Kingdom.
From the Ministry of Sciences they clarified that the new strain identified in the European country has not been detected in Chile.
