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A new mutation, known to have the strongest contagious power among corona mutations, has been confirmed for the second time in Korea.

Quarantine authorities are looking at people who have come into contact with the patient, and there are also studies that show that the new mutation may not work well with existing treatments, which is more worrisome.



This is Cho Dong-chan, a medical reporter.



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The second confirmed BA.2.75 mutation patient arrived from India on the 5th and was confirmed on the 7th, two days later.



There were 18 contacts, one confirmed on the 14th, and 14 with symptoms will be tested.



There are concerns about regional spread through additional infections.



The second patient was confirmed four days earlier than the first, but the mutation analysis was rather late.



This is because the analysis time varies by region, ranging from one to two weeks.



Mutation gene analysis is performed at 1,600 cases per week at public health centers and 150 hospitals across the country.



Although it is a large amount of testing in the world, samples are extracted according to the age distribution of confirmed patients.



[Kim Eun-jin / Head of New Pathogen Analysis Division, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: When looking at the distribution by age, we have the amount of analysis (mutation) for more than 60% of samples under the age of 60 in proportion to the number of confirmed cases.]



Patient BA.2.75 with the highest transmission power What is still less may be an early phenomenon.



BA.5, where the detection rate in Korea is close to 50%, was below 1% in the first three months, but then soared from the fourth month.



What is more worrisome is that there are studies that say that existing treatments may not work well.



As a result of the University of Tokyo study, 5 out of 11 antibody treatments that were effective against the original Omicron BA.



[Lee Geun-Hwa/Professor of Microbiology, Hanyang University: (BA.2.75) If there is a mutation in the protrusion protein, the therapeutic efficacy of the existing monoclonal antibody therapy, that is, its neutralizing ability, will inevitably decrease.] Lagevrio,



which inhibits virus proliferation itself and paxrovide's effect on BA.2.75 is being studied.



(Video coverage: Kang Dong-cheol, Video editing: Kim Ho-jin, CG: Seo Dong-min)



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