HANOI: Vietnam has discovered a new COVID-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of the Indian and British strains, state media reported Saturday.
The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
More than 6,700 cases including 47 deaths have been reported in Vietnam — the lion’s share have occurred since April.
“We have discovered a new hybrid variant from the Indian and the UK strains,” Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long was quoted telling a national meeting on the pandemic Saturday.
“The characteristic of this strain is that it spreads quickly in the air. The concentration of virus in the throat fluid increases rapidly and spreads very strongly to the surrounding environment.”
He did not specify the number of cases recorded with this new variant but said Vietnam will soon announce the discovery in the world’s map of genetic strains.
There were seven known coronavirus variants in Vietnam before Long’s announcement, according to the Ministry of Health.
The communist country has previously received widespread applause for its aggressive pandemic response, with mass quarantines and strict contact tracing helping keep infection rates relatively low.
The new round of infections has made the public and government fearful and authorities quickly moved to place strict limits on movement and business activity.
Cafes, restaurants, hair salons and massage parlors as well as tourism and religious spots have been ordered to close in various areas of the country.
Vietnam — a country of 97 million people — has vaccinated a little over a million citizens.
It is now ramping up its jab rollout and hopes to achieve herd immunity by the end of the year, according to the minister for health.
Authorities have called on people and businesses to donate money to help procure vaccines, while embassies and international organizations have been contacted for assistance, state media reported.
The country presently has close to two million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine remaining, but said it is buying more than 30 million doses of the Pfizer shot.
It is also in talks with Russia to produce Sputnik V, according to state media, and is working on a home-grown vaccine.
Vietnam discovers new hybrid coronavirus variant
Vietnam discovers new hybrid coronavirus variant
- New COVID-19 variant is a combination of the Indian and British strains
- The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
