In the hours of this Saturday afternoon, the Institute of Public Health (ISP) reported a third case of the British variant of covid, detected in the last hours in the city of Constitución, Maule region.
In relation to the new case, it is an asymptomatic Italian citizen who remains interned in the local hospital on a preventive basis. He is in good condition and would serve his quarantine tomorrow.
On the other hand, the ISP indicated that the foreign citizen traveled to Constitución by bus and that the traceability of all passengers has already been carried out. The results of the PCR tests will be known in the coming days.
Meanwhile, relatives and close friends of the patient have already undergone PCR tests, and they were negative on two occasions.
Finally, it should be noted that the Italian citizen arrived at the Santiago international airport on December 22 to meet with his partner. That same day, the first two cases of the British variant arrived in Chile, a woman and a young man who already infected five other people in Curicó.
The dreaded British strain
On December 20, the authorities of the United Kingdom decreed maximum confinement for London and the southeast of England, due to the strong increase in cases of covid-19 registered in that area and that was attributed to this new strain of the SARS-CoV virus- 2.
On that occasion, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, explained that it is transmitted “much more easily” and could increase the reproductive number of the disease, which implies an “exponential” spread of the virus.
Within this context, the scientific evidence collected so far indicates that the strain accelerates the transmission of the virus by up to 70%. Likewise, from the WHO, they also warned that it could affect the effectiveness of some means of diagnosing the disease.
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