The Health Ministry has confirmed that one person who had the coronavirus variant B1351, originating from South Africa, who was living in Bali, has died.
However, the Director of Prevention and Control of Direct Communicable Diseases (P2PML) of the Health Ministry, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, was not able to confirm where the 48-year-old victim was from.
Meanwhile, from the data recorded at the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), it was confirmed that the nose and throat swabs were taken from the foreigner on 25th January 2021. GISAID is a data-gathering institution that is currently the reference for genome data for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Furthermore, Nadia also explained that Indonesia had identified two cases of coronavirus mutation variant B1617, first discovered in India, this April. The findings are reported regularly using the method of searching for new strains of the Whole Genome Sequence (WGS) coronavirus.
From the GISAID data, the two cases of the Indian variant were found to be from two women aged 32 and 38, with nasal and throat samples taken on the 3rd and 22nd April 2021, respectively.
So far, seven variants of the coronavirus have been identified in Indonesia, namely the D614G, B117, N439K, E484K, B1525, B1617, and B1351 variants. photo courtesy setkab.go.id
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