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The Finnish coronavirus strain appears to be the most recently discovered variant in recent months worldwide, although almost all are similar to the British, South African, Brazilian or Japanese variants.
A new coronavirus strain, dubbed Fin-796H, has been identified in southern Finland, a joint study by Vita Laboratories and the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki on Wednesday revealed.
According to the Finnish laboratory, not all PCR tests approved by the World Health Organization can detect the new strain.
“Vita Laboratoriot Oy and the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki detected a previously unknown variant of the coronavirus in a sample from southern Finland. Mutations in this variant make detection difficult in at least one of the PCR tests recommended by WHO. This discovery can have a significant impact on determining the spread of the disease, “the laboratory said in a statement.
Although the new strain of the new coronavirus contains mutations that can also be traced to British and South African strains, it is quite different from all others previously found.
“Its heritage has the same characteristics as the variants previously spread around the world, but it does not appear to belong to the lineage of any of the previously known variants,” says the statement.
The associate professor of clinical microbiology at Vita Laboratories, Sakari Jokiranta, said in a statement that a certain mutation in the strain prevents its detection by one of the methods approved by the WHO.
“This was observed when analyzing a sample from a patient with variant COVID-19 infection,” he added.
However, researchers do not yet have information on where this mutation developed, but this is unlikely to have happened in the country, since the total number of COVID-19 cases in Finland is significantly less than in other states.
The resistance of the new strain to vaccines currently in use remains unclear.
According to statistics from the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare, the number of cases of the new coronavirus increased by 548 on Wednesday, reaching a total of 51,595 out of 5.5 million citizens. The death toll for the northern European nation is 723.
Almost 240,000 Finns have already received the COVID-19 vaccine, which represents about 4% of the population.