MANILA – Two close contacts of a Filipino traveler – the country’s first case of coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom – have tested positive for the disease, said the Philippine health department.
Health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the traveler’s mother and girlfriend yielded positive results in the second round of their reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction tests after initially testing negative.
Their swab samples will be sent to the Philippine Genome Center to check if they have the new COVID-19 variant believed to be around 70 percent transmissible, said Vergeire.
“The genome sequencing result of the 29-year-old patient’s girlfriend will be released by this week. It’s taking a while because the Philippine Genome Center is testing 750 samples in this batch,” she said.
The country’s first patient of the UK coronavirus variant was a real estate agent from Barangay Kamuning, Quezon City. He returned home with his girlfriend from Dubai last Jan. 7.
British scientists have earlier said that the B.1.1.7 has key mutations, including one that affects the “spike” protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells.
The Philippines has barred arrivals from 33 countries due to the UK variant, which has been detected in at least 41 other countries, but the UAE is not among the countries included in the ban.
Apart from the UK variant, five other variants are being monitored across the globe namely South Africa’s 501Y.V2, Malaysia’s 1701V, Nigeria’s P681H, Denmark’s Cluster 5 and China’s D614G./PN
