From Monday, on the results of positive PCR tests, the geographical origin of the contracted variant will be replaced by the nature of its mutation, which should allow health authorities to monitor more closely the most transmissible strains of the virus. .
No more variant accuracy on PCR test results.
From next Monday, May 31, if you take a positive Covid-19 test, you will no longer know if you have contracted the English, Brazilian, or Nigerien variant of Sars-CoV-2.
Maybe it was "exotic", but more informative enough.
From now on, analysis laboratories will no longer report the origins but the mutations, that is to say the properties of the virus which infects you: namely if it is more contagious or more resistant to the vaccine.
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Coronavirus: follow the evolution of the situation Tuesday, May 25
Identify mutations likely to become dominant
"These will be numbers. We will have 484K, 484Q and L452R. It may seem barbaric, but these are the most widespread mutations for currently circulating variants", explains to Europe 1 the virologist Yannick Simonin, from the University of Montpellier.
"This allows specialists to know whether mutations which promote transmission are taking precedence over others, or whether they are mutations which confer a hijacking of the immune system of these variants."
For the moment, therefore, three different mutations can be indicated.
If this information is almost impossible to read for non-specialists, it is much more precise for health authorities.