Lee: UK variant present in ‘giant quantity’ of COVID instances

Cayman Compass

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Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Lee has said the COVID-19 UK variant has been detected in a “large number” of Cayman’s coronavirus cases.

Lee, in a brief emailed response to Cayman Compass queries on the variant, said the Health Services Authority has been performing tests on local positive coronavirus cases to detect the strain.

“The HSA is able to perform a surrogate test for the COVID-19 UK variant… which has shown there are a large number of positives in Cayman who have this,” he said.

A total number of the UK variant cases was not provided.

The ‘S gene dropout’ is frequently found on the HSA’s multiplex PCR tests in returning travellers from all destinations; this is evidence of fairly widespread penetration of variants, Lee explained.

Lee, in a previous statement to the Compass, said that Cayman does not currently have the capacity to routinely provide genomic sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 samples, which is used to detect variants of the virus.

However, some samples…

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