Professor Dr. Iqbal Choudhary shared on Thursday that a study conducted by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) showed that close to 50% of COVID-19 cases in Pakistan’s were due to the UK variant, while 25% were because of the South African variant, reported The News on Friday.
The details about the impact of the South African and UK variant were reported by Dr. Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine & Drug Research (PCMD) at the University of Karachi’s International Centre for Chemical & Biological Sciences (ICCBS) which was reviewing the COVID-related research projects undertaken by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) and the Jamil-ur-Rahman Centre for Genome Research of the PCMD.
PCMD said that the third wave of coronavirus is becoming more serious due to the sharp increase of the highly contagious UK and South African variants in Pakistan.
Prof Choudhary, who is the director of ICCBS, warned that the situation may slip out of control if immediate measures are not taken to address the looming disaster.
“In the backdrop of massive violations of coronavirus-related standard operating procedures across the country, these variants have the potential to sweep a major chunk of the population within a short period,” said Dr. Choudhary. The positivity rate of coronavirus stands at 8.31% as of today (Friday).
Original Link: https://www.geo.tv/latest/345621-coronavirus-50-of-third-wave-cases-due-to-uk-variant-25-because-of-south-african-variant