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DOH warns public to be more cautious as COVID-19 virus mutation ‘can be really true’


The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday warned the public to be more cautious in light of the new development that the virus causing COVID-19 is mutating and becoming more infectious.

DOH Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that one of their experts studied the reports claiming a new version of the coronavirus called D614G or G variant.

“It has been studied by one of our experts and he was saying that there are a lot of things on the article that can be really true,” Vergeire said in an interview on ANC.

"Now, we are just informing the general public that we have to be more cautious,” she added.

A Reuters report in June said genetic mutation in the new coronavirus that significantly increases its ability to infect cells may explain outbreaks in Northern Italy and New York.

Scientists at Scripps Research in Florida said the G variant was seen infrequently in March, but by April accounted for some 65% of cases submitted from around the world to the GenBank database run by the National Institutes of Health.

University of the Philippines’ Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology molecular biologist director Dr. Edsel Salvana suggested that this mutation might be one of the reasons behind the increase in COVID-19 cases in the country.

Citing foreign reports, Salvana said the original virus has been slowly being replaced by the G variant. He said 95% of cases in the world have been due to the mutated virus since June.

However, Vergeire said the DOH is still gathering more evidence to support the claims so that they can match some measures to address the threat of this development.

“There are these specific circumstances within the virus and its processes that made it more infectious,” she said.

“But of course, we are still gathering more evidence for this, so we can appropriately identify a measure so we can address this new set of evidences,” she added.

Vergeire said there is no proof yet that the G variant is deadlier. —Joviland Rita/KG, GMA News

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