STOCKHOLM, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Sweden is stepping up efforts to map mutated strains of the coronavirus in the country amid increasing cases of the COVID-19 variant first detected in Britain.
On Tuesday, the government instructed the Swedish Public Health Agency to increase national surveillance of different coronavirus variants, according to Swedish TT News Agency. All of the country's 21 counties must build up the capability for genome sequencing.
The coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was identified in approximately 11 percent of 2,200 positive COVID-19 tests screened for the new strain, the Public Health Agency of Sweden said in a press release on Tuesday. Last week, fewer than 100 cases of the new strain, believed to be more contagious than the original, had been confirmed in the country.
It is important to be able to identify not only the mutation found in Britain but also other interesting virus variants, Minister for Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren told TT.
She also mentioned mutations that have been discovered in South Africa and Brazil. "It (genome sequencing) has already started in some counties that have made a more extensive sequencing and it will now be increased significantly."
The aim is to meet the European Union's recommendation that 10 percent of all COVID-19 positive tests should be sequenced.
By Tuesday, 576,606 COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in Sweden since the pandemic started. Since Friday, the number of deaths from the virus has increased by 224 to 11,815. Meanwhile, the number of patients in intensive care had decreased from 277 to 240.
As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.
Meanwhile, 237 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain, and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Jan. 29. Enditem
