BRIN Researcher: IHU Variant Is Not As Infectious As Omicron

JAKARTA - Researcher at the Eijkman Center for Molecular Biology Research and Innovation at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Amin Soebandrio said from several research reports that currently the B.1640.2 or IHU variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is not as fast as the Omicron variant.

"It's not as contagious as Omicron, but maybe it can escape the vaccine," Amin said as quoted by Antara, Thursday, January 6.

Amin said that until now research reports on characteristics, behavior and transmission and other related information about IHU variants are still very limited. The IHU variant has quite a lot of mutations, that is, there are 46 mutations.

"This has just been reported in France and the Republic of the Congo, but the cases are still very limited, not too many, so we cannot conclude," he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has not categorized the IHU variant as a variant of interest (VoI). Until now, the IHU variant is still under WHO monitoring. In addition, further observations are needed for the IHU variant.

Regarding the efficacy of the vaccine against the IHU variant and how dangerous the infection is from that variant, it cannot be explained because the information currently available is still very limited. "We are waiting for further information from WHO," said Amin.

WHO classifies a variant of the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19 as VoI with the criteria, namely that the variant has genetic changes that are thought to or are known to affect virus characteristics such as transmission, disease severity, immune shedding, diagnostic or therapeutic release.

Variant of interest was also identified as causing significant community or multiple-cluster transmission of COVID-19 in many countries with increasing relative prevalence with increasing number of cases over time, or other significant epidemiological impact indicating an emerging risk to global public health.