![]() ![]() One question is which variants – and which mutations – might be able to evade the effects of our existing vaccines. “Does it have clinical significance or is it just an observation? And that has to be linked to epidemiological data, which is what is being done.” “They are not clear as to what is the significance of this,” he said. ![]() Guleria cautioned that a new variant was not necessarily cause for alarm, since researchers are still investigating the effect of the mutations. Researchers are now investigating whether it could help the virus partly escape the effects of vaccines. ![]() For instance, the South Africa variant has mutations that change the structure of the spike protein, which appear to affect the receptor binding domain – the part of the spike protein most important for attaching to and infecting cells. How dangerous a mutation is depends on where in the virus it’s happening. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also said it has found a variant with mutations that don’t match previously identified variants of concern. Thirty-four were the variant first identified in South Africa and one was variant P.1 from Brazil. Some mutations have little effect – but others could make the variant more easily transmissible, or cause infections with more severe symptoms.įrom around 10,787 samples analyzed by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics from 18 states, 771 cases of variants of concern were detected, the majority of which were the UK strain, according to the Ministry of Health. “We see crowds developing, partying, a lot of marriage ceremonies are happening in India,” he added.Īll viruses evolve over time, and sometimes make changes when they replicate, causing mutations. “One of the factors is that today it’s been one year since India had the lockdown and there are people who seem to have gone into Covid fatigue,” he said, adding that “you see that in the community, when you go out, wearing a mask has become less and less. Guleria said the second wave “is something that has already been seen in many European countries we seem to be following them.”Ī number of factors are contributing to that rise, Guleria explained. India has now reported a total of more than 11.7 million cases and 160,000 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Why have its Covid cases plummeted?īut by the start of March, it became clear that cases were slowly on the increase again – and they have exploded in the past few weeks. (Photo by INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / AFP) (Photo by INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP via Getty Images) INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images By February, the number of daily cases had fallen by nearly 90%, to about 10,000 a day.Ī health worker checks the body temperature of arriving passengers as they are mandated to undergo Covid-19 coronavirus screening at a railway terminus in Mumbai on January 6, 2021. The country’s first wave of infections started climbing last summer and peaked in September, with numbers slowly declining since then. ![]() The Health Ministry has said “such mutations confer immune escape and increased infectivity,” while adding that further analysis is being conducted. Guleria said the emergence of the more infectious UK variant in some states may be one of the factors contributing to the recent surge in case numbers. While the Health Ministry has not correlated these to the recent rise in cases, these variants have been primarily detected in states such as Punjab and Maharashtra, two states that the health ministry has called states of “grave concern,” given that they are contributing to most of the nation’s case load. Most of the cases are the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK, according to a statement from the Indian Ministry of Health on Wednesday. The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics – which has been carrying out genome sequencing and analysis of coronavirus strains since December – says 771 cases of variants of concern have been detected in India. The rise in cases comes as the country’s top researchers announced that there are nearly 800 variants of concern present in the country. Randeep Guleria, director at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, told CNN on Wednesday that “it is the beginning of a second wave.” The country has been reporting more than 35,000 new cases daily for over a week in a recent surge in cases after they fell in January and February this year. India on Thursday recorded 53,476 new Covid-19 cases, marking the highest single-day rise in cases since October 23, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian Ministry of Health. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |