The World Health Organization urged the public not to worry too much about a variant of the coronaviruses that was first identified in France in November.
TheInstitut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée in Marseille, southern France, on June 14, 2021.
Nicolas Tucat/AFP.
The IHU variant is similar to the omicron variant, which was identified by theInstitut Hospitalo-Universitaires Méditerranée Infection research center.
A paper was published on December 29th on medRxiv that said that the IHU variant was first reported in southern France in a patient who had recently returned from Africa.
It is too early to speculate on how the variant will spread or what symptoms it will cause, according to the paper, which was authored by the sometimes controversial IHU.
The variant has had a lot of chances to pick up, but the WHO has seen little evidence of spread beyond about 20 cases.
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Highly mutated Covid variants can act differently. The omicron variant was rendered impervious to most antibody treatments as the viral structures targeted by those treatments had changed, because of the omicron variant's mutations. The researchers at Northeastern University said that viruses tend to become more infectious and less deadly when they are earlier in their evolution. Omicron may be following this pattern, representing a strain that is less likely to send patients to the hospital.
Several times, the maverick approach of Raoult has sparked controversy. In 2020, Raoult promoted the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a 100% effective cure for Covid, despite little evidence to justify the claim. Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit advised Raoult to stop promoting himself as a genius and to become a doctor. The public was warned of the drug's potential psychiatric and cardiac side effects by U.S. physicians, who later claimed that hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure.
The W.H.O. says that a variant found in France is not a concern. The New York Times.
The threat of the Covid-19 variant found in France was downplayed.
