Near East University researchers have completed the last phase of the project they have been conducting to investigate the viral strains of SARS-CoV-2 that cause COVID-19 in TRNC.

The new variants formed by the mutations of SARS-CoV-2, which caused a pandemic affecting all over the world, stand out with their different features. One of the most important examples of this is the transformation of the UK variant (B.1.17), which has 70 percent more contagiousness and turned into the dominant variant that causes contamination in the TRNC and Turkey in the last few months.

British variant remains dominant
As a result of the genome sequence analysis carried out with samples taken from 34 cases detected between 5 September 2020 and 1 March 2021 in a joint study with Erasmus University in the Netherlands, it was determined that the structural diversity of these variants originating from different countries show that there are at least eight different SARS-CoV-2 variants in the TRNC. Near East University explained that the variants B.1.1.209 (Netherlands), B.1.1 (USA), B.1.1.82 (Wales), B.1.1.162 (Australia) and B. 1 (Italy) do not cause local contamination in the country. As of mid-December, it was determined that three different variants (B.1.1.29, B.1.258 and B.1.1.7) originating from the United Kingdom were effective in local contagion.

It was announced that the B.1.1.7 variant, known as the British variant, still maintains its dominance at 60-70 percent since February, and that the British variant was detected in all 18 cases that were positive and serial analysis was performed in February.

Variants of South Africa, Brazil and India were not seen in our country
New SARS-CoV-2 variants, which have been a concern in recent months, continue to spread around the world. The most prominent feature of these variants, which are called South Africa, Brazil and India variants, is that they are resistant to some vaccines and their transmission rate is high. The results of the SARS-Cov-2 Genome Project announced by the Near East University also revealed that these variants were not detected in the TRNC.

Genome analysis results are in the GISAID database under the name of Near East University
Genome analysis results were recorded under the name of Near East University in the SARS-CoV-2 fast data sharing network, which causes COVID-19 disease known as the GISAID initiative, and shared in the international arena. There are approximately 1.6 million SARS-CoV-2 data in the GISAID database.

The results obtained show that the variant determination studies carried out by the Near East University COVID-19 PCR Diagnosis Laboratory revealed results with 100 percent sensitivity and the results of the viruses with mutation detection were confirmed by sequence analysis method. At the same time, it is aimed that the Near East University Genome Laboratory will be operational as of next month and the sequence analysis, which is a huge deficit in the country, will be conducted in Northern Cyprus.