AMMAN — As of Saturday, the Ministry
of Health stated that there were only 245 cases of the extra-transmissible
Delta
COVID-19 variant in Jordan.
اضافة اعلان
But a microbiologist and former
member of the national epidemiological committee says that there are likely
‘thousands’ of unidentified cases of the variant in the Kingdom - and a
national study is hoping to uncover the full extent of the strain.
“I believe that there is evidence
that the dominating strain in Jordan is the Delta strain,” said Azmi Mahafzah,
professor of microbiology at the University of Jordan, in an interview with
Jordan News. The
microbiologist previously chaired the lab committee at the
national epidemiological committee.
Although the government has only
identified hundreds of cases, Mahafzah said that “the real picture is
different. The Delta virus is the predominant one in Jordan - it is in
thousands.”
The Delta strain originated in India
and has been found to be more transmissible than other strains of the
coronavirus. It is distinguished by two significant mutations, known as the
L452R and E484Q, which make the virus more transmissible and more difficult for
the immune system to overcome.
Secretary General of the Ministry of
Health for Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases Affairs and the official in
charge of the coronavirus portfolio, Adel Belbeisi, told
Jordan News that the
ministry is currently implementing a nation-wide study.
More than two thousand
positive COVID-19 samples will be gathered and tested for the Delta variant, he
elaborated.
“I think the Delta variant will not
be less than 15 or 20%” of the total sample, said Belbeisi in an interview with
Jordan News.
The official noted that the “Delta
variant is dominant almost in most of the countries in the region and in the
UK”, with the World Health Organization (WHO) predicting that the strain will
soon dominate the region.
Belbeisi added that all positive
COVID-19 cases identified at the Central Public Health Laboratory of the
Ministry of Health are tested for the Delta variant. On Monday, there were 584
new cases of COVID-19 documented in Jordan, with a total of a 2.79% positivity
rate from
PCR tests.
According to Mahafzah, labs in
Jordan have specialized PCR tests that can identify the specific strain of a
sample of COVID-19. “We use different primers from the original primers,” he
said. “This can be identified. And it can be confirmed by gene sequencing for
the protein, not necessarily the whole genome.”
“In Jordan, labs do this,” he
explained. “But the interest in this has declined.” Mahafzah said that during
his tenure on the epidemiological committee, at least five percent of COVID-19
samples were sent to Scripps Laboratories in California for gene sequencing.
Now, he said, this practice has fallen by the wayside.
Mahafzah claimed that he had heard
from private laboratories that anywhere from 40% to 90% of the COVID-19 tests
they perform are the Delta variant.
“By no means the Delta strain can be
only 200 or 400 cases,” he said. “The majority of isolates are Delta, but they are
not tested. The government seems to be not interested in pursuing this and
doing gene sequencing. The Delta variant has dominated the scene, because of
the very high transmissibility.”
Jordan News spoke with several
medical laboratories that perform COVID-19 testing in the Kingdom. One stated
that they do encounter a significant number of cases of the Delta strain, while
another said that they did not encounter many Delta cases. Neither lab offered
specific numbers or percentages of how many cases they encountered of the Delta
strain.
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