The Department of Health (DOH) said that the Lambda variant of coronavirus has not yet been detected in the country.
“Until now, with all of these sequences that we have done, we have not detected the Lambda variant yet,” said DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire on Friday, July 23.
Vergeire also asked the public to only trust the information provided by the DOH and the Philippine Genome Center.
“Ang Philippine Genome Center lang ang nakakapag test ng whole genome sequencing sa ating bansa... ang pagkakatiwalaan dapat ng impormasyon ay galing sa Philippine Genome Center at saka sa DOH dahil kami ang may hawak ng mga datos na ito (Only the Philippine Genome Center can perform whole genome sequencing in our country... the information must come from the Philippine Genome Center and then from the DOH because we are the ones in charge of this data),” she added.
To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the Lambda variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as a “variant of interest.” It was first detected in Peru in December last year.
The WHO defined a variant of interest as one “with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape.”