There have been over 4,000 variants of Sars-Cov-2 identified worldwide so far.
In recent days, sections of the German media have mistakenly labelled the B.1.160 strain as the "Luxembourgish variant".
The LNS released the following statement:
"Following recent articles published by German online newspapers about a so called Norwegian-Luxembourgish variant, B.1.1.6, the LNS would like to clarify that under this lineage number, described as a US (Texan) lineage, no sequence is registered that corresponds to a Luxembourgish-Norwegian variant in the official international database PANGO lineages (https://cov-lineages.org/lineages.html).
"Furthermore, LNS has received confirmation from authorities in Germany that the variant in question, and discussed in the newspapers, belongs to B.1.160 and not B.1.16. In fact, B.1.160 is one of many variants of the virus and has been circulating as part of a larger European lineage in many countries, including in Luxembourg, where it was first detected in September 2020.
"Hence, variant B1.160 has not emerged in Luxembourg."
47 cases of the British variant and four cases of the South African variant of Covid have been identified by the State laboratory.
The National Laboratory LNS can sequence 384 viruses a week. This allowed them to check 11 percent of all cases for the third week of the year.
The most common variant is currently B.1.160 with 44.1% of cases, while the second is B.1.1.7, also known as "the British variant", with 16.1%.
There have been no cases of the Brazilian or Japanese strains so far in Luxembourg.
The laboratory specifies in its report that no conclusions can be drawn on the prevalence of the variants in the general population, as 50% of their tests are done by request from the Health Inspectorate and thus aren't a representative sample of all residents.
The good news is that it still looks like we may escape the flu this season.
