Highly-Contagious GH Strain Of Coronavirus Spreading In South Korea

All recent coronavirus clusters in South Korea are seeded mostly by the highly-infectious GH strain of the virus, which is believed to spread six times faster than other types of COVID-19, the Health Ministry's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Monday.

In early May, South Korea relaxed lockdown but later reimposed some coronavirus-related restrictions amid new local clusters in Seoul and the nearby Gyeonggi-do province.

Since May, the health authorities have confirmed 270 positive COVID-19 cases linked to a young man who visited several nightclubs in Seoul and over 150 more related to a retail logistics centre in the city of Bucheon of the Gyeonggi-do province. Most of the cases from both clusters are linked to the GH strain.

The KCDC has sequenced genomes of 526 coronavirus-positive patients and the GH stain was confirmed in 333 cases.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), COVID-19 is classified into seven different strains -- S, V, L, G, GH, GR and O (others) -- and GH is the most aggressive among them.

South Korea has identified all strains of the virus since the start of the outbreak, except for the L strain. The G, GH and GR stains started to spread in the country from April-May.