SEOUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th July, 2020) All recent coronavirus clusters in South Korea are seeded mostly by the highly-infectious GH strain of the virus, which is believed to spread six times faster than other types of COVID-19, the Health Ministry's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Monday.
In early May, South Korea relaxed lockdown but later reimposed some coronavirus-related restrictions amid new local clusters in Seoul and the nearby Gyeonggi-do province. Since May, the health authorities have confirmed 270 positive COVID-19 cases linked to a young man who visited several nightclubs in Seoul and over 150 more related to a retail logistics center in the city of Bucheon of the Gyeonggi-do province. Most of the cases from both clusters are linked to the GH strain.
The KCDC has sequenced genomes of 526 coronavirus-positive patients, and the GH stain was confirmed in 333 cases.
According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 is classified into seven different strains � S, V, L, G, GH, GR and O (others) � and GH is the most aggressive among them. South Korea has identified all strains of the virus since the start of the outbreak, except for the L strain. The G, GH and GR stains started to spread in the country from April-May.
The GH strain was first discovered in Europe, the Americas and Africa, meaning that it was imported to South Korea. However, now, the aggressive strain has been registered locally, according to the KCDC.
The health authorities added that South Korea had recently started to report more imported cases, which now account for almost half of new cases registered per day.
South Korea has so far confirmed 13,137 coronavirus cases, over 11,800 recoveries and 284 deaths.
