Snow is in front of the entrance to Garmisch-Partenkirchen hospital. A possible new variant of the corona virus has been discovered in Garmisch-Partenkirchen hospital. Samples are currently being examined in the Charité hospital in Berlin, the hospital announced on Monday.
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Germany is the latest country to discover a new mutation of the coronavirus, with a new variant identified among a group of hospital patients in Bavaria.
Local news outlets first reported on Monday that an unknown variant of the coronavirus had been discovered in 35 patients at a hospital in the Bavarian ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southeastern Germany.
The altered virus was found in 35 of the 73 newly infected people in the hospital, Bavarian news center BR24 reported Monday. Samples are now reportedly being examined at the Charité university hospital in Berlin. CNBC contacted the German Ministry of Health to confirm the reports.
Officials said the variant is different from recently discovered variants in the UK and South Africa.
The hospital’s deputy medical director, Clemens Stockklausner, told a press conference on Monday that so far there was no clarity as to whether the mutation made the virus more transmissible (as with the variants discovered in Britain and South Africa) , or more deadly.
“At this point we have discovered a minor point mutation … and it is by no means clear if it will be clinically relevant,” said Stockklausner. “We have to wait for the full sequence.”
Neither the British nor the South African variants have been found to cause more fatalities, although, due to their ability to spread more easily, they have caused more infections, hospitalizations and, unfortunately, more deaths. Particularly in the UK and Ireland, the mutant virus has spread rapidly, leading to an increase in infections and some hospitals facing an influx of patients.
Information on the new variant found in Germany emerged on the same day that the country’s Health Minister Jens Spahn said the current level of coronavirus sequencing in the country was not sufficient and that laboratories required (and compensated) would be to sequence coronavirus samples to monitor virus mutations.
A handful of other countries that have discovered coronavirus mutations, including the UK and South Africa, are known for their large-scale surveillance and genome sequencing of coronavirus samples.
Last week, Dr. Janosch Dahmen, a doctor and a German parliamentarian at the Green Party, told CNBC that “we need a more precise crisis mode here in Germany to fight the pandemic, and I am very concerned that the number (of infections) will go much higher as we can see right now in Great Britain and Ireland. “
Infections persist
Germany’s 16 prime ministers will meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday to discuss whether lockdown restrictions across the country, which are soon to be ended, should be tightened or expanded. on Jan. 31.
The infection rate in Germany remains a major concern, with an additional 11,369 daily cases reported by the public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, on Tuesday. That brings the total number of cases to just over 2 million. The death toll is 47,622.
Like other European countries, Germany wanted to prevent the spread of the more contagious strains of the virus found in Great Britain and South Africa.
Merkel reportedly told her CDU (Christian Democratic Union) party lawmakers last week that “if we fail to stop this British virus, we will have 10 times the number of cases by Easter … We need another eight to ten weeks of tough measures, “German daily image reported.
On Monday, Spahn insisted that people should not call the coronavirus mutation discovered in Britain ‘the English variant’.
“Just as we didn’t talk about the ‘Chinese virus’ last year, we shouldn’t talk about the ‘English variant’ now,” Spahn said, Reuters reported.