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Health

Angolan IHMT director reveals PALOP will do simultaneous virus studies

African Portuguese-speaking countries will proceed with simultaneous studies on the new coronavirus to understand its viral load and sequence it, said Filomeno Fortes, an Angolan doctor and director of the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT).

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"We are working with Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique to see if we start studies simultaneously in all countries so we can compare data and results," said Filomeno Fortes in an interview with the Lusa agency.

"We have the teams created and the protocols established and we are seeing if in the coming weeks we can start receiving some samples [in Lisbon] to support some countries in sequencing" the virus, he added.

The public health expert stressed the importance of understanding whether the virus that is circulating in Africa, and particularly in Portuguese-speaking countries, is the same virus that is circulating in other continents, how intense its viral load is and how it responds to treatments.

"In the possibility of introducing a vaccine in a year's time, it will be important to know what type of virus is circulating or has circulated in these countries because it will have to be specific to that type of virus," he said.

Filomeno Fortes also encouraged countries to conduct immunity studies to understand what percentage of the population is infected and may be immune.

As an example of progress in the investigation of the disease, he pointed out Mozambique, where it has already been possible to understand that 75 percent of those infected with the new coronavirus are asymptomatic.

The IHMT is also working with Portuguese-speaking countries to establish protocols linked to epidemiological surveillance, saying that answers must be found to several questions that are being raised with the spread of the disease.

"Why has there been no home transmission in many of the cases that have occurred in Angola? An individual was infected, lived with his family for several days until he was identified and there was no transmission of the disease. It is an epidemiological issue of interest for us to understand this phenomenon," he said.

In Africa, there are 2997 confirmed deaths, with more than 95,000 infected in 54 countries, according to the most recent statistics about the pandemic in that continent.

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