NEW DELHI (AP) – A potentially problematic new variant of coronavirus has been detected in India, as well as variants first detected in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, health officials said on Wednesday.
However, officials and experts from the Ministry of Health warned not to link the variants with a continuous increase in new infections in India.
Cases in India had plummeted since September and life was back to normal. But cases began to rise last month and more than 47,000 new infections were detected in the last 24 hours, along with 275 deaths, the highest death toll in a day in more than four months.
The virus has been mutant throughout the pandemic. Most mutations are trivial, but scientists have been investigating which ones could make the virus spread more easily or make people sicker.
The three variants first detected in South Africa, Britain and Brazil are considered the most worrying and have been designated as “worrying variants”. The three variants were found in 7% of the nearly 11,000 samples that India sequenced since 30 December. The most widespread was the most contagious variant detected in the UK last year.
The new variant found in India has two mutations in the spinous protein that the virus uses to attach to cells, said Dr.
He added that these genetic modifications could be of concern, as they could help the virus spread more easily and escape the immune system, but warned that it would not link it to the increase.
The Ministry of Health said in a statement that the variant was found in 15% -20% of the sequenced samples from the state of Maharashtra. The state, which houses India’s financial capital, has been hardest hit by the recent rise and accounts for more than 60% of all active cases in India.
In the city of Nagpur, Maharashtra, infections caused by this new variant were occurring in those parts of the city that had hitherto been least affected, said Dr Sujeet Singh, head of the New Delhi National Disease Control Center.
“The susceptible population group … was substantially large,” Singh added.
Meanwhile, health officials admitted they were worried about the upcoming festivals, many of which mark the arrival of spring. The Indian government has written to states to consider imposing restrictions, but many celebrities have challenged distancing and virus protocols.
This sloppiness and the slow deployment of the vaccine are the most worrying, said Dr. Vineeta Bal of the National Institute of Immunology of India. He said that, unlike last year, the virus spread to richer neighborhoods, infecting families who had previously managed to stay protected in their homes. Now, people are less afraid and lower their guard. They wear masks, “but masks protect people’s beards instead of their noses,” he said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.