A highly contagious form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been discovered in Vietnam, which combines the Indian strain with the British.

Vietnam’s Health Minister announced on Saturday that a new type of coronavirus has been detected, which is a combination of British strains and Indian strains, which is rapidly spreading through the air. Reuters, Citing the online publication VnExpress. The new version accounts for more than half of all COVID cases in this country.

Vietnam is facing a new wave of infection, after last year it managed to control the spread of the disease.

Nearly 3,600 people were infected in 31 of the 63 cities and provinces at the end of April, more than half of all cases in the country. Since the onset of the epidemic, approximately 6,400 cases of coronavirus have been reported in Vietnam.

Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said, “After doing genetic sequencing, I discovered a new version, which is a combination of British and Indian strains.”

“Specifically, it is an Indian version with mutations that originally belonged to the British version,” he said.

Seven varieties of the virus have been identified in Vietnam so far: B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 (British version), B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 (Indian version )).

The minister also said that the laboratory cultures of the new version, which are much more transmitted than the previous ones, have shown that the virus multiplies very quickly, explaining why so many cases occurred in many places in such a short time Have come

Editor: BP