The Department of Health confirms that there are now two new COVID-19 variants discovered in the Philippines.
The DOH said on Saturday confirmed that a new coronavirus variant called P.3 has been traced to the country but stressed that there’s not enough evidence to say whether it is a cause for concern.
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Dr. Anna Ong-Lim, member of the DOH technical advisory group, explained in an online media briefing that after the Philippine Genome Center detected 85 cases “with unique set of mutations,” they submitted the information to the global reporting system Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak Lineages (PANGOLIN).
“We were waiting for them (PANGOLIN) to let us know kung ito nga ba ay unique to the Philippines or natuklasan na sa ibang bansa. They’ve come back to us and told us na ito nga ay bagong variant,” she said.
There are now 98 cases of the Philippine variant after the country detected 13 more cases.
The more transmissible Brazilian variant has also reached the country.
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“What we have is isolated in the Brazilian lineage but not the Brazilian variant,” she said.
The latest batch to be sequenced by the PGC involved 752 samples, majority of which were from Metro Manila, Calabarzon, and the Cordillera Administrative Region, the DOH noted. (TDT)
