Japan confirmed on Friday a new variant of the coronavirus that infected almost 100 people.
© (Behrouz Mehri / Pool / AP)
A medical worker fills a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Tokyo Medical Center in Tokyo on Wednesday, February 17, 2021. Japan’s first coronavirus injections were given to healthcare professionals on Wednesday fair, starting a vaccination campaign deemed crucial to holding the already-delayed Tokyo Olympics. (Behrouz Mehri / Photo of the pool via AP)
Reuters reported that Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters that 91 infections were documented in the Kanto area of eastern Japan, and two other cases were discovered at airports.
“It can be more contagious than conventional strains and, if it continues to spread internally, it can lead to a rapid increase in cases,” said Kato.
The variant has a mutation in the protein spike that can decrease the effectiveness of vaccines.
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases said that the variant appears to have originated abroad, but is different from other variants that circulate in Britain, South Africa and Brazil.
Japan has more than 422,000 cases of the virus and 7,360 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The country’s Ministry of Health reports that Japan has reported 150 cases of the other variants found for the first time in Britain, South Africa and Brazilian travelers.
[ MAP: The Spread of Coronavirus ]
The variants complicated the outbreak’s prospect, with speculation that the highly infectious strain documented for the first time in the United Kingdom could become the dominant strain in the United States in March.
Experts say it is now a race to vaccinate as many people as possible to help control the spread of the variants.
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