Kazakh Health Ministry confirms first cases of Eta variant of COVID-19

The Eta variant is circulating in four regions of the Central Asian country

The Eta variant of the coronavirus that was first detected in Nigeria last December has been reported in Kazakhstan, Health Minister Alexey Tsoy said on Tuesday, Qazet.az reports citing Sputnik.

The Kazakh health ministry continues efforts to detect different variants of the deadly virus across the country and has sequenced laboratory samples obtained from COVID-19 patients in July-August.

"As a result of sequencing, different COVID-19 variants were detected in 96 samples — the Delta strain in 57 samples (59.4%), the Alpha strain in 24 (25%), the Wuhan strain in 10 (10.4%), and the Eta strain in five (5.2%)," Tsoy wrote on Facebook.

The Eta variant is circulating in four regions of the Central Asian country, he added.

As of 15 September, as many as 77 countries across the world have reported the Eta variant, according to the data provided by the World Health Organization, which has labeled it as a variant of interest.