World Health Organization officials are holding a press conference on Monday on the coronavirus pandemic as more countries report cases with contagious new mutations of the virus.
Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases on Sunday said it found a new variant of the coronavirus in four passengers arriving from Brazil. The institute said the new strain appears to have some of the same qualities, like increased infectivity, as other variations discovered in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Meanwhile, the United States has found at least 63 Covid-19 cases with the new, more contagious strain of the virus first identified in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The variant doesn’t appear to make patients more sick or increase their risk of death, health officials have said.
The coronavirus has infected more than 90.4 million people across the globe and has killed at least 1.9 million people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
