[ad_1]
© (Behrouz Mehri / Swimming pool / AP)
A medical worker fills a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Tokyo Medical Center in Tokyo on Wednesday, February 17, 2021. Japan’s first coronavirus vaccines were administered to health workers on Wednesday, starting a campaign to vaccination seen as crucial for holding the already delayed Tokyo Olympics. (Behrouz Mehri / Pool photo via AP)
Japan confirmed a new variant of the coronavirus on Friday that has infected nearly 100 people.
Reuters reported that Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters that 91 infections had been documented in the Kanto region in eastern Japan and two more cases were found at airports.
“It can be more contagious than conventional strains, and if it continues to spread nationally, it could lead to a rapid increase in cases,” Kato said.
The variant has a mutation on the spike protein that could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases said the variant appears to have originated overseas, but is different from other variants circulating 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 health ministry reports that Japan has reported 150 cases of the other variants first found in Britain, South Africa and Brazilian travelers.
[ MAP: The Spread of Coronavirus ]
The variants have complicated the outlook for the outbreak, with speculation that the highly infectious strain first documented in the UK could become the dominant strain in the US in March.
Experts said it was now a race to get as many people vaccinated as possible to help control the spread of the variants.
Copyright 2021 US News & World Report
[ad_2]
Source link