NEW DELHI (AP) – A new and potentially troublesome variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in India, as have variants first discovered in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, health officials said Wednesday.
However, officials and experts at the Ministry of Health warned not to link the variants with a continued increase in new infections in India.
Business in India had fallen sharply since September, and life was returning to normal. But cases started to rise last month and more than 47,000 new infections were discovered in the past 24 hours, along with 275 deaths – the highest one-day death toll in more than four months.
The virus has been mutating during the pandemic. Most mutations are trivial, but scientists have been investigating which ones can spread the virus more easily or make people sicker.
The three variants first discovered in South Africa, Great Britain and Brazil are considered the most concerning and are referred to as ‘variants of concern’. The three variants were found in 7% of the nearly 11,000 samples that India has sequenced since December 30. The most common of these was the more contagious variant discovered in the UK last year.
The new variant found in India has two mutations in the spiny protein that the virus uses to attach to cells, said Dr. Rakesh Mishra, the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, one of the 10 research institutes that sequence the virus.
He added that these genetic tweaks could be concerning as they could help the virus spread more easily and escape the immune system, but he warned not to link it to the wave.
The Ministry of Health said in a statement that the variant was found in 15% -20% of the samples sequenced from the state of Maharashtra. The state, which is home to India’s financial capital, has been most affected by the recent wave and is responsible for more than 60% of all active cases in India.
In the city of Nagpur of Maharashtra, the infections caused by this new variant were in those parts of the city that had been least affected so far, said Dr. Sujeet Singh, head of the National Center for Disease Control in New Delhi.
“The susceptible population … was considerably large,” added Singh.
Meanwhile, health officials admitted they were concerned about upcoming festivals, many of which mark the arrival of spring. The government of India has written to states to consider imposing restrictions, but many celebrants have renounced and defied virus protocols.
That laxity and slow vaccine rollout are most concerning, said Dr Vineeta Bal of India’s National Institute of Immunology. She said unlike last year, the virus spread through wealthier neighborhoods, infecting families previously protected in their homes. Now people are less afraid and are dropping their guard. Masks are worn, “but the masks protect people’s beards instead of their noses,” she said.
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.