COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A Danish study has found that people infected with a more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in Britain have a higher risk of being hospitalised, the country’s Serum Institute said on Wednesday.
Out of 2,155 people infected with the variant codenamed B117 in the institute’s study, 128 were hospitalised, a rate 64% higher than people infected with other variants, it said.
The result is consistent with a similar study in Britain earlier this month, the institute said in a statement.
The B117 variant last week became dominant in Denmark, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all new infections, up from less than 5% at the beginning of the year.
Denmark is a front-runner in genome sequencing being used to analyse the genetic material of the coronavirus to determine variants.
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
