COVID-19: Two cases of UK strain officially confirmed in Ukraine

The first two cases of the UK strain of the novel coronavirus have been officially confirmed in Ukraine.

The new strain was found in two patients from Ivano-Frankivsk region. The information has been confirmed by the Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases, according to the online newspaper Segodnya.

The patients are under medical supervision.

Read alsoCOVID-19 myths: Ukraine gov't debunks fake stories compromising vaccinationHead of the Infectious Diseases Department at Bogomolets National Medical University, Professor Olha Golubovska said the virus mutation found in the two patients is typical of the UK, Brazilian and South African variants of the coronavirus.

"There is no evidence that it causes an increase in mortality. However, now in a short period of time, we have been covered by another wave of morbidity with a large share of seriously ill patients, intensive care units are overcrowded, and I'm afraid this period will be the most difficult for us since the first patients," she wrote on Facebook.

New COVID-19 strains

• Mutated variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus were first identified at the end of 2020, when the first vaccines were being developed. In December, two new strains were identified in the UK, one of them was found in patients who came from South Africa.
• In January 2021, a new strain was found in four people who entered Japan from Brazil.
• In February 2021, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced that it could take from six to nine months to produce and start distributing effective vaccines against mutated strains of the coronavirus.