French scientists have identified a new COVID-19 variant with 46 mutations — more than even the highly infectious omicron variant.
So far, 12 people in southeastern France are known to have been infected by the variant, named “IHU” or variant B.1.640.2.
The first case was linked to a person with a travel history to Cameroon, researchers said in a paper published on medRxiv. The person was fully vaccinated.
In their analysis, the authors found “46 mutations” which had not been spotted in other countries, nor labeled a variant under investigation by the World Health Organization.
