Health workers at a hospital in Hanoi collect specimens for COVID-19 testing (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Patient 1,435, a Vietnamese
woman repatriated from the UK, has been confirmed as the first case
with , a recently found and highly contagious variant of the
, in Vietnam.
The Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute made the
confirmation on January 2.
The
patient, born in 1976, was brought home from the UK on Flight VN50, which
landed at Can Tho International Airport in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho on
December 22, and was quarantined upon arrival.
She is among the six, out of
the 305 passengers on board, tested positive for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
The
HCM City Pasteur Institute immediately conducted genetic sequencing on the six patients
and found that Patient 1,435 have been infected with the new variant VOC
202012/01, which was recently discovered in the UK.
The woman,
having a 10-year history of high blood pressure, is undergoing treatment at the
Hospital for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases of Tra Vinh province.
Her husband, who is still in
the UK, has also tested positive for the virus.
Tran
Dac Phu, senior adviser to Vietnam’s public
health emergency operations centre, cited international scientists as
saying that the new coronavirus variant in the UK is 70 percent more transmissible
than existing strains.
It will be very dangerous if early detection and timely
quarantine are absent, he said, warning that the mortality rate is not high,
but the more people infected, the more deaths, especially among high-risk
groups like the elderly or those with underlying health conditions.
As the new variant spreads rapidly, strict monitoring of both
illegal and legal entries is needed. A worrying problem now is people who enter
the country illegally, so the public’s coordination with authorities is highly
necessary for ensuring good control of the pandemic, Phu added.
To
head off the spread of the new virus variant, many European countries and some
countries and territories in Asia like the Philippines, Japan, the Republic of
Korea, and Hong Kong (China) have banned
flights from the UK./.
Source: VietnamPlus
