Task Force Urges People Not To Worry Excessively With New Variants Of COVID-19

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JAKARTA - Head of The Covid-19 Management Task Force Behavior Change, Sonny Harry B Harmadi urged the public not to worry too much about the mutation of the new variant of COVID-19.

"Mutation of the virus is a natural process and we do not have to worry too much," sonny said in a discussion titled New Variant of COVID-19 online, Saturday, May 22.

Nevertheless, Sonny reveals, there are four things that should be of concern.  First, if the COVID-19 variant impacts pcr's ability to detect whether it is positive and negative, then it can be false negative. Sonny also claimed to this day it has not had an effect.

"The second thing, is the mutation of the virus the transmission rate becomes higher? In some reports, for the B117 variant from the UK, it is estimated that it is 50 percent more contagious than the original and more dangerous virus. But there is no scientific evidence yet," he explained.

Third, regarding whether the COVID-19 mutation has an impact on the severity of the disease, it has not been able to answer the details and certainly because it is still in the process of scientific observation.

"Viral mutations have an impact on the efficacy of vaccines or the effectiveness of vaccines, this according to existing reports, B117 variants from the UK has the potential to decrease the ability of antibodies in neutralizing the virus," he said.

Sonny added, the new variant of COVID-19 that is currently the most concern is B1351 which comes from South Africa. Because based on some reports, he said, the variant also has the characteristic of weakening the effectiveness of vaccines.

"But even so we have not received the results of the official study, this is still under observation and estimate," he concluded.