Six cases of new coronavirus variant identified in Greece

Greece’s National Organization for Public Health on Thursday confirmed that six cases have been identified of a new coronavirus variant that is being closely monitored by the World Health Organization (WHO), amid concerns that it has the ability to bypass the protection offered by Covid-19 vaccines.

EODY reported that it has identified two cases of the new variant at Athens International Airport, another two in Argolida in the northern Peloponnese region and one each in the capital, Attica, and in Achaia, also in the Peloponnese.

However, it is the highly contagious Delta variant that is still causing the most concern, as its share among thousands of random samples checked by the National Network of Genomic Monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 shot up in the August 2-15 period to 96.7% from 23.6% since the start of the year. Τhe share of the original Alpha strain, meanwhile, dropped in August 2-15 to 2.4% from 58.3%, according to EODY.

Mu, named after the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet, was first detected in Columbia in January and has spread to at least 39 countries. The WHO categorized it as a variant of interest on August 30.