‘Two main SARS-CoV2 virus variants circulating’
The Hindu
Vaccines can stall the virus, say CCMB scientists
Two main SARS-CoV-2 virus variants are prevalent across the country. While the so-called 'double mutant' or B.1.617, earlier mostly seen in Maharashtra, at 50% or more, Kerala and Karnataka in significant proportion, the "most infectious" among them - the UK variant, B.1.1.7, has been found 80% or more in Punjab and significant proportion in Delhi, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and neighbouring states, according to scientists of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) on Wednesday. “There is nothing new in any of these variants and they are transmitting from person to person as the earlier ones like the dominant A2a strain seen last year but showing the same clinical symptoms, infection severity and certainly do not appear to be more lethal or causing more mortalities as is evident from viral genome sequencing of the samples. The major cause of such a huge and sharp spread is people’s behaviour and any variant is only the substrate," affirmed former director and now advisor Rakesh Mishra and his colleague Divya Tej S. In fact, Dr. Divya Tej has put out a twitter post with illustrations of the genome sequencing showing that the double mutant or B.1.617 is now fast replacing the earlier predominant virus strain of N440K observed extensively in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala from last year when swab samples were collected in July-August.More Related News