The New Finnish variant Fin-796H shares with the South African variant the key mutation 484K that has been claimed to be central in the impaired vaccine protection. Furthermore, the Fin-796H variant has mutations in the genomic area coding the N gene.
The variant Fin-796H has genomic features from both the British and South African SARS-CoV-2 variants but is distinct from these and other published variants.
The new variant was detected during the sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spike-gene for clinical samples in the Institute of Biotechnology. The variant has unique features and the combination of S gene mutations is clearly novel, stated by Petri Auvinen , Research Director at the Institute of Biotechnology.
