The UK Health Ministry said that a new COVID-19 strain known as ‘Lambda’ is reported to be more dangerous than the Delta variant, it has been detected in more than 30 countries in the past four weeks.
On Monday, the Health Ministry tweeted, “The Lambda strain was reported to have originated from Peru, the country with the highest mortality rate in the world,” reported The Star. It further reported that the Health Ministry had linked the report by the Australian news portal news.com.au saying the Lambda strain had been found in the United Kingdom.
Six cases of the Lambda strain have been detected in the UK to date according to the portal. However, the researchers are worried that this variant may be “more infectious than the Delta variant”, The Star reported.
During May and June in Peru, Euro News reported citing the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Lambda accounts for about 82 percent of the coronavirus case samples reported.
Recently, Public Health England in the UK reported a handful of cases caused by Lambda had been reported in the country and predicted it as having “a potential increased transmissibility or possible increased resistance to neutralizing antibodies”.
Jairo Mendez, PAHO’s Regional Advisor on emerging viral diseases said on 30 June it had been detected in eight countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, “but sporadically in most countries”.
More than 31 per cent of the samples from May and June, Euro News reported which clearly shows that the strain was dominant in in Peru and in Chile. It was further stated that Mendez was not yet clear evidence it was a more transmissible virus.
Earlier, The World Health Organisation (WHO) termed the Delta variant as a ‘variant of concern’ (VOC). in Peru, in Chile
