Colombian variant of Covid-19: a first case detected in Pas-de-Calais – actu.fr

A first case that will have to be followed closely. For the first time in Hauts-de-France, a laboratory detected a patient with the Colombian variant of Covid-19, at the beginning of August 2021. This case has been detected in Montreuillois (Pas-de-Calais).

First case of Colombian variant in the region

It was the Biopath laboratory, responsible for sequencing positive tests in the region, which announced the news. “The week from 08/03 to 08/10, 2218 cases of the Indian variant were detected. It now represents 98% of positive cases. We also detected the first case of the Colombian variant in Montreuillois ”, we can read on its site.

This variant of the virus, B.1 621, was detected for the first time in Colombia in January 2021 and was then spotted in around thirty countries, the United States, Mexico, Spain, Germany …

In France, there would be a little more than fifty cases identified, mainly in Île-de-France. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a case of this variant has been detected in Hauts-de-France.

Why is this variant worried?

For the time being, the B.1 621 mutation is not among the variants subject to an alert for enhanced surveillance (as is the case with the Delta variant, for example). It is, however, classified as a mutation of concern.

Indeed, the Colombian variant worries the health authorities, especially since the death of seven residents of a retirement home in Belgium, and this although they were fully vaccinated. However, the Belgian authorities stressed that these patients were particularly vulnerable.

For now, scientists do not yet have all the data to know the dangerousness of this mutation. According to Rémi Salomon, president of the medical establishment commission of the AP-HP, the variant would be “less transmissible than the Delta, which would mean that it would have little chance of supplanting it”. Vigilance is however required.

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