The Brittany Regional Health Agency held a press conference at the Saint-Brieuc prefecture today. Its director Stéphane Mulliez, explained that currently “This variant is under surveillance”.
Brittany worries the health authorities today. This “Breton variant” was discovered for the first time in the Lannion hospital center. In a press release published on Thursday, March 11, the Brittany Regional Health Agency specified that this new variant was not more transmissible or severe than the others. But according to a new press release made public Monday evening, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) has led to classify this strain as “Variant Under Investigation” (variant to follow).
What is its origin ?
At the end of February, health professionals from Lannion and Guingamp (Côtes-d’Armor) hospitals in Brittany reported the appearance of a new strain of Covid-19 after the detection of a cluster of 71 people composed of 44 patients and 27 caregivers. Therefore, genome sequencing was performed in the laboratory and it turns out that it is a neo-strain. On March 13, 79 cases were identified and 8 of them carried this new “Breton variant”, confirmed once again by sequencing.
A variant that has the ability to be “invisible”
According to Prof. Pierre Tattevin, head of the infectious diseases department at Rennes University Hospital, nasopharyngeal tests are ineffective. Which means that this new strain would be almost undetectable with the means deployed to date. “Most often, it is not related to the test but to the fact that patients do not excrete it in the nose”, explains the head of the infectious diseases department at the Rennes University Hospital at the microphone of BFMTV, “when we take deeper samples, when patients are in intensive care and need lung samples for example, at that time the test is positive”. The doctor specifies that it is also too early to come forward about this Breton strain.
However, the Directorate General of Health specifies in its press release that no data identified to date allows us to confirm that this strain is more deadly or contagious than the original.
