Medical Faculty Professor Jovanovic tells Telegraf if Brazilian strain of coronavirus in Serbia

Photo: Marko Jovanovic

The Brazilian strain of coronavirus has not been confirmed in Serbia, neither it nor the South African one, Professor Tanja Jovanovic from the Medical Faculty in Belgrade has told Telegraf.rs. It was in this institution's lab that Jovanovic and her team established the presence of the British strain in our country at the beginning of the year.

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She explained for Telegraf.rs that they are doing sequencing of samples from patients who have been hospitalized, but that the Brazilian strain that appeared two days ago in Europe has not been confirmed in our country.

"We have not detected the Brazilian strain. Neither Brazilian nor South African. For now, the British strain is still dominant," Professor Dr. Jovanovic told Telegraf.rs.

The director of the Covid hospital in Batajnica, Dr. Tatjana Adzic Vukicevic, said this morning that there are indications that the Brazilian strain is also present in our population.

"The Brazilian strain has arrived in Europe, so that was probably the aspiration of Professor Adzic that there are indications it is present in our population as well," said Professor Dr. Jovanovic.

Immediately after that, the Crisis HQ for the fight against coronavirus told Telegraf.rs that there was no official confirmation in that regard.

The Brazilian strain arrived in Europe two days ago. It has not yet become the dominant strain.

The symptoms that accompany it are similar to those caused by other variants of coronavirus - fever, cough, muscle aches, loss of the sense of smell and taste ...

However, what is known so far about this variant of coronavirus is that it can evade antibodies acquired naturally and lead to reinfection. Namely, those who already had coronavirus are not protected from the Brazilian variant. It is one of the two variants of coronavirus discovered in Brazil or in people traveling from Brazil, named P1 and P2. The P1 variant has several changes - three spike protein mutations instead of one - and this is the fact that causes the most concern among experts.

(Telegraf.rs)