Coronavirus in Argentina: confirmed a case of community transmission of the English variant

The Nation’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation released a report on Friday confirming that in Argentina community transmission of the British coronavirus strain has already been identified.

The report, prepared by scientists from the Argentine SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Project (PAIS), explains that 156 samples were collected in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (Caba) and in the province of the same name, where the VOC202012 variant has been detected. / 01, originally from the UK.

According to the text, one of the samples which gave a positive result “has a travel history”, but the other “is associated with a case of community circulation”. The samples were collected between November 1, 2020 and February 7, 2021. The British variant is known to be more contagious than the traditional coronavirus.

Claudia Perandones, technical scientific director of ANLIS Malbrán, confirmed the strain’s greater contagion capacity, while specifying that “this does not worsen the clinical picture of the disease, and it is very reassuring”.

Carolina Torres is a doctor of virology and a member of the PAIS team, and pointed out that “there were different studies on the evolution of the VOC202012-01 variant, line B.1.1.7, based on epidemiological information, but from different places, and they all came to the conclusion that it would be 50% more transmissibility. “

The first detected case of the British strain in Argentina occurred on January 15, when the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Roberto Salvarezza, announced that a traveler who arrived from Frankfurt, Germany, was infected with this variant of SARS-CoV-two.

According to the official at the time, the Interinstitutional Consortium “detected the entry into the country of an Argentinian resident in the United Kingdom, with a history of travel to Austria and Germany for professional reasons, who had since arrived asymptomatic in Argentina. Frankfurt at the end of December 2020 and in Ezeiza, it is positive for SARS-CoV-2 antigens ”.

“A new report of active surveillance of variants of SARS-CoV-2 in the city and province of Buenos Aires confirmed two cases of variant 501Y.V1 (UK) and new cases of variant P.2 (Rio de Janeiro) “Salvarezza reported this Saturday on his Twitter account, according to the Country Project report, which also indicated that the mutations 501Y.V2 (South Africa) and 501Y.V3 (Manaus) were not found.