Fourteen new cases of the new mutant coronavirus strains have been reported in India, the government said this morning.
According to ministry data on Wednesday, a total of 20 individuals in India now have the new coronavirus strain. This includes the six who tested positive and were confirmed on Tuesday to have a new strain. 8 samples from NCDC, Delhi; 7 from NIMHANS, Bengaluru; 2 from CCMB, Hyderabad; 1 from NIBG, Kolkata; 1 from NIV, Pune and 1 from IGIB, Delhi, tested positive for the new strain.
In the meantime, two more individuals were found to be COVID-19 infected after returning from the United Kingdom. With this, the total number of infected individuals, including those returning from the United Kingdom and their contacts, has risen to 33, said a Delhi government official.
“All the 33 persons admitted to a special facility in LNJP hospital were stable. Their samples have been sent for genome sequencing to ascertain whether they were carrying the new UK strain or not,” he was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
According to scientists, the latest mutated form of the coronavirus found in the UK and South Africa is considerably more transmissible than other known strains.
The number is likely to surge in India. Most of these cases of new virus strains have been reported in Delhi (8), followed by Bengaluru (7).
The government has said that 33,000 passengers who have returned from the UK in the past month are being monitored.
Current coronavirus vaccines, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, would be effective against mutated strains. “There is no evidence that suggests that current vaccines will fail to protect against COVID-19 variants from the UK or South Africa,” said Professor K Vijay Raghavan, the Principal Scientific Advisor of the government.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the emergence of a mutated variant of the coronavirus there, India has suspended all passenger flights connecting to the UK, joining many other countries that have implemented a similar flight ban.
The variant strain has 14 non-synonymous (amino acid altering) mutations, 6 synonymous (non-amino acid altering) mutations, and three deletions, according to the Union Health Ministry. There are eight mutations in the Spike (S) gene that carries the ACE2 receptor binding site (Receptor Binding Domain), which is the point of entry into the human respiratory cells of the virus.
