MORE than 600 cases of new variants of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) have been detected in the country, the Department of Health (DoH) said on Sunday.

Of the 752 sequenced samples from patients, 642 were new variants including the B117 that was first detected in the United Kingdom, B1351 that originated in South African and the P.3 variant, or the strain first found in the Philippines, according to the Philippine Genome Center.