Almost 60% of newly confirmed coronavirus cases in Tokyo from April 19-25 were with the virus bearing the highly infectious N501Y mutation.
This percentage was nearly double that of the previous week, the Tokyo metropolitan government said Wednesday, perhaps an indication that variants are rapidly replacing the original virus in the capital as well.
According to the metropolitan government, 136 positive tests examined by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health showed 81 cases, or 59.6%, were of the virus with the N501Y mutation. This was much higher than the 27.9% of cases of the virus with the E484K mutation and 12.5% with the original virus.
From April 12-18, the N501Y mutation prevalence was 32.8%, so the latest figure was up 26.8 percentage points.
"The N501Y mutant virus is becoming completely dominant," said Mitsuo Kaku, a specially appointed professor at Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University who attended the coronavirus control meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday. "It should be noted that the positivity rate has been extremely high."
From now, the metropolitan government will also have the public health institute screen for the variant of the novel coronavirus found in India.
On the same day, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry announced that, based on random sampling of positive tests at domestic institutes, there have been 10,102 cases of infections with the virus bearing the N501Y mutation, in a preliminary count as of Tuesday. This number has been reached in about four months since the first case in Japan with the mutant virus was found in December.
The highest number of N501Y mutant virus cases has been in Osaka Prefecture at 2,045, while there have been 1,883 in Tokyo. Both figures were about twice the numbers reported April 20.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
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