The Good News Is That Vaccines Work Against India Strain. The Bad News...

As infections surge by more than 300,000 cases for 14 straight days, pushing India's tally past 20 million, the country's limited ability to track new mutations emerging from its outbreak is a growing concern for scientists.

The good news is that the vaccines work against a new virus strain circulating in India that's spread to several other countries. ICMR study shows #COVAXIN neutralises against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2 and effectively neutralises the double mutant strain as well. @MoHFW_INDIA@DeptHealthRes#IndiaFightsCOVID19#LargestVaccineDrivepic.twitter.com/syv5T8eHuR Here is the REALLY IMPORTANT part. The combination of the two mutations gives a value of 4, in other words the two mutations DO NOT confer substantial antibody evasion and we can stop using the term 'Double Mutant'. The bad news is it won't be only the new version of the pathogen to emerge from an outbreak of this scale, underscoring the urgency of mapping other possible variants that may be currently racing through India's tightly-packed population of 1.4 billion people. As infections surge by more than 300,000 cases for 14 straight days, pushing India's tally past 20 million, the country's limited ability to track new mutations emerging from its outbreak is a growing concern for scientists. Second- or even third-generation versions of the variant known as B.1.617 could already be circulating in India and some may be more dangerous, said William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor who now chairs think tank Access Health International.