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The new variant of the virus has not been discovered in Norway, the director of the Line Vold department at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) tells NTB.
British authorities said Wednesday that two cases of a variant of the virus have been detected in the country that is linked to South Africa. They fear that the variant is more contagious than the variant of the virus with mutations that have raised concern in Europe in recent days.
Unlike the British variant
– It is different from the British variant, but has a mutation that is the same in a slightly central place in the genetic material of the virus, at the receptor-binding site on the nail protein on the virus label. Also, both variants have slightly different mutations, says the director of the Line Vold department at FHI.
She points out that the changes are in the area of the virus that is suspected of making it most contagious.
– It may also have a potential impact on the performance of the tests, but we have concluded that, to our knowledge, it does not affect the tests we use in Norway.
It does not impose restrictions
Violence says that it is natural for new mutations to appear: mutations and changes happen all the time in viruses. Also in Norway we have different variants of the virus with different mutations circulating.
Some countries monitor these changes, while other countries do not have such monitoring. The UK and Denmark are countries with good tracking of virus changes. It is also likely that variants of the virus that we do not detect are circulating.
At this time, NIPH will not recommend new restrictions.
– This is something that we keep in mind all the time, but overall we have some of the strictest measures in Europe now to reduce the risk of infection from imports. There is very limited travel activity between South Africa and Norway. The stopover of the flight from the UK is to put in place the systems that have been described, and it is the rules that we have at the bottom that will reduce the risk of importing all variants of the coronavirus, also any other new variant of which we can currently have a poorer overview. says Vold.
It may be more difficult to control the epidemic.
Changes in the virus in the nail protein may also have a potential effect on the effect of the vaccine, but thus far there is no evidence that this is the case, nor has there been any information that the variant causes more serious disease. .
– It is probably still very uncertain, but it is the concern about infectivity that is central. The variant, if it is true that it is significantly more contagious, may replace other variants of the virus. In that case, it will be possible to increase the number of infections and the epidemic may become more difficult to control.
(© NTB)
