Health officials say a new hybrid of COVID-19 variants has been contracted by construction workers in Bangkok.
Supakit Sirilak, director of the Medical Sciences Department, said yesterday that seven workers were found to be infected with a worrying combination of the Alpha and Delta variants, which were first detected in the United Kingdom and India, respectively.
At the construction site, which went unidentified by Supakit, an alarming 1,327 of 1,737 laborers tested positive in recent days for COVID-19. Of those, 53 were infected with Delta and 168 with Alpha.
The combination of both is concerning because it could give rise to yet another mutation, he said.
“More cases of mixed variants like this could lead to a hybrid and eventually a new variant, which is an incident we don’t want to happen,” Supakit said.
While highly effective vaccines have been found to protect against both variants, further mutations could render them less useful.
Other variants continuing down the Greek alphabet to Lambda have also been detected but not yet considered threats by the World Health Organization.
Thailand has repeatedly set new new record highs of daily COVID-19 infections and deaths in recent weeks. The country this morning confirmed 8,685 new infections and 56 deaths logged in the previous 24 hours.
Related
Sino-Thai worker camp near Bangkok sealed after 500+ workers contract COVID
Reader Interactions