France: Breton Variant B.1.616 added to WHO’s list of variants of interest

B.1.616, Breton Variant, Coronavirus, Europe, France, H655Y, Health, Infection, Science, Testing, Transmission, Variants

France’s “Breton variant”, B.1.616, was added to the WHO list of Variants of Interest this week.  Key Spike mutations are listed as G142 deletion; D66H; Y144V; D215G; V483A; D614G; H655Y; G669S; Q949R; and N1187D 

WHO: COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update 

 

France: Breton coronavirus variant B.1.616 – 42 cases in total, 18 deaths

 

France: Breton coronavirus variant B.1.616 – “A new Sars-Cov-2 variant poorly detected by RT-PCR on nasopharyngeal samples, with high lethality”

 

France: Breton variant B.1.616 – 37 cases & 16 deaths with just 9% of cases detected by first RT-PCR coronavirus test

** This post was originally published on April 15, 2021 **