Babak Eshrati, the deputy technical director of the Infectious Diseases Management Center of Iran’s Health Ministry, said tests to detect infections with the virus are performed regularly at the country’s borders, given that a lot of people have traveled to neighboring Iraq to attend the Arba’een pilgrimage.
The BA.2.86 variant, nicknamed “Pirola”, is a newly designated, highly mutating variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Pirola first appeared in the US last month and has since been detected in the UK, Canada, and Sweden, among some other countries.
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