DECRYPTION – Since the flash survey conducted on January 7 and 8 with a rate of 1.4%, a more precise assessment is sorely awaited.
Sunday evening, after a call from Olivier Véran, Minister of Health, Philippe Froguel, geneticist and professor at Lille-II University and at Imperial College in London, finally learned that his Lille laboratory would be required to participate in the emergency sequencing of suspected cases of the English variant. The same will apply to the National Center for Research in Human Genetics of the CEA in Évry.
Read also :Covid-19: more contagious, the English virus would also be more deadly
This is a last-minute turnaround, since originally the two laboratories had not been selected on Saturday, to their dismay. Why such a about-face? “I think it is linked to the 9% rate of the English variant detected in recent days in the Paris region that a member of the Scientific Council has just announced to me”, confides Philippe Froguel. A very worrying figure which will at least have the merit of putting an end to an endless battle of steeples between teams of researchers to find out who would carry out the sequencing of the viruses. And who perhaps also explains why
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