Bangladesh, along with the rest of the world, has been trying to digest news of new variants of the novel coronavirus.
Dubbed VUI-202012/01 - the first variant under investigation in December 2020 - the new variant is suspected to be 70% more infectious and British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday said it “was out of control.”
A new variant also appeared independently in South Africa, carrying one of the mutations found in the new UK variant.
Since the emergence of the new variants, people around the world have been using the words “new strain” and “new variant” interchangeability on social media and in various media reports. Even if the two words are confused with each other, they are not interchangeable.
Also read: Coronavirus: Countries that have detected the new strain
According to medical science, a strain is a genetic variant whereas a variant is a new strain of microorganisms.
Professor Ian Sanne, a member of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, said it is important that we use the right terms in the right context.
“A new strain would cause much bigger concern around all the hard work that has been achieved up until now. Essentially, we would be set back to zero and we would be dealing with a new strain of virus circulating around the world.
Also read: WHO: New coronavirus variant not out of control
“But, that’s not the case. This is a variant and it has some genetic changes. It represents viral evolution,” he said.
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Professor Sanne noted that the South African variant was not the same as the one discovered in the United Kingdom
“The variant isn’t the same as the UK variant. There are two different viruses but they are different variants of the same strain of the coronavirus.”
He stressed that the new variant was more transmissible and had a higher viral load. Therefore, it is more reasonable to call the new mutation of the currently causing coronavirus “a variant.”
