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COVID-19
Covid News and Updates

Delta’s AY.4.2 strain raises alarm with 17 cases reported in India

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

As many as 17 cases of the Delta variant AY.4.2 strain, which is quickly spreading in the United Kingdom, have been reported in India during the third Covid wave alarm. These samples were taken in May and September of 2021. For the same time period, India submitted a total of 19,466 sequences to GISAID.

A sub-lineage of the Delta variant of COVID-19, AY.4.2, has been detected in the United Kingdom, China, and Russia, and now it has made its way to India.

Several states including Andhra Pradesh have reported 07 cases of new strain, Kerala 4, Karnataka and Telangana 2 cases each, Jammu & Kashmir and Maharashtra have reported 1 case, respectively taking the total tally to 17.

The Commissionerate of Health and Family Welfare Services in Karnataka issued an official memo warning the public against the AY.4.2 strain.

“As the complete nature of the said newly reported variant is yet to be understood, it is crucial to step up vigilance & follow Covid-19 appropriate behavior instead of creating panic among the public,” the note read.

Following the rise in the cases, the Centre decided to step in ahead of the festival season as fears of COVID-19 third wave mounts.

“A team is investigating the new COVID19 variant AY.4.2. ICMR and NCDC teams study and analyze the different variants,” Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told ANI.

In addition, the Centre has released additional instructions to prevent a third COVID-19 wave.

AY.4.2 has consistently increased in volume, accounting for around 9% of UK cases in the previous 28 days. A few European countries, such as Denmark, Germany, and Ireland, have also reported it.

AY.4.2, one of 45 Delta sub-lineages termed Delta plus by many, is likely to be renamed Nu.

According to British experts, it might be up to 15% more transmissible than the original Delta, and according to the Daily Mail, its incidence in England jumped in a month, from 4% in September to 8.9% in the two weeks leading up to October 9.

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coronavirus variants
Covid News and UpdatesNational & International News

NCDC director says UK variant may be the cause of second wave

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) director, Sujeet Singh on Friday stated that the current wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Delhi could have been fuelled by the UK variant as its prevalence in genomes sequenced nearly doubled from the second to the last week of March.

Speaking at a webinar, ‘Genome Sequencing of SARS-CoV-19’, Singh said the UK variant of coronavirus is also dominant in Punjab. In Delhi, there are primarily two types of variants — B.1.617 and the UK strain — found in the genome sequenced samples, the NCDC director said.

“If we try to co-relate, the surge we are observing in Delhi, it directly co-relates to the type of variant which we are observing,” he said.

So far, Singh said, 15,133 samples have been sequenced by INSACOG, a consortium formed in December last year to increase viral genomic surveillance in order to understand the spread of the coronavirus in a rapid and robust manner.

The B.1.617 variant of coronavirus is also known as the double mutant strain.

The UK variant was found in 28 per cent of samples in the second week of March. In the last week of the month, 50 per cent of samples had this variant, Singh said.

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coronavirus variants
Case Studies

New virus may be driving India’s Covid surge

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

India crossed 100,000 new daily infections on Sunday, and its wealthiest state Maharashtra has emerged as the epicenter. It halted all non-essential services, ordered private companies to work from home, and shut malls and restaurants through April.

Other states have also imposed restrictions though none as severe. After new variants from the UK were discovered in several inbound passengers, India set up a consortium of 10 state-run laboratories to sequence positive tests samples in December. However, between January and March the country has only studied 11,064 of its samples, the ministry of health said at a briefing on March 30, which is less than 0.6% over that period.

India doesn’t have enough data on the new variants to explain the steep, nine-fold jump in infections from around 11,000 daily new cases in early February, said Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. “We are essentially reverse engineering to explain the features of the virus curve as we do not have credible data on variants of concern and genomic surveillance,” Mukherjee said. “The more you let the infection spread the more chances of the virus mutating.”

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coronavirus variants
Covid News and UpdatesNational & International News

807 UK variant, 47 South African, 1 Brazilian variant found in India

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday announced that 807 cases of UK variant, 47 cases of South African variant and 1 of Brazil variant have been found in India.

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COVID-19
Case Studies

Study: Virus found commonly in India more transmissible than the UK variant

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

Pune: According to a study conducted by the scientists at the National Institute of Virology, the UK variant (B.1.1.7) of the coronavirus did not appear to be more transmissible than the variant of the virus most common in India.

The UK variant has mutations that enable it to spread more easily among people and was linked to a sharp spike in cases in the United Kingdom last December.

India has registered 771 cases of the three ‘variants of concern’ reported internationally. Of these 736 have been reported from B.1.1.7.

To establish how quickly the strain spread, NIV scientists infected two groups of nine hamsters, with one group give the B.1.1.7 and the other the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in India. The latter is characterised by a mutation called D614G that, early last year, made it the dominant strain globally.

“The study demonstrated comparable transmission efficiency of both UK and D614G variants of SARS-CoV-2 in Syrian hamsters,” the more recent study said.

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covid mutation
Covid News and Updates

Sequencing in Sars-Cov2 may help monitor evolution of mutants: Study

by Vaishali Sharma
written by Vaishali Sharma

The last month of the year 2020 began with worrying news regarding new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that show increased transmissibility, first identified in the UK and S. Africa. Recent reports from South Africa mention concerns regarding lineage B.1.351 which has a mutation in the RBD of the Spike protein (N501Y) which may be associated with faster transmission and possible adverse illness in young and healthy individuals.

A study conducted on 200 samples identified 4 novel genetic variants and 89 variants that were exclusive to Kerala and not present in other parts of the country.

The mutation landscape of SARS-CoV-2 has been under constant global scrutiny to understand the effect of these changes on the infectivity and antigenicity of the virus. While most mutations are of little to no consequence, sometimes the virus acquires a mutation that gives it an advantage over other strains. The Spike protein is used by the virus to enter human cells via the ACE2 receptor. Thus, Spike mutations can potentially facilitate better affinity or binding and enable easier entry into the host cell, as seen in the case of the D614G mutation described in the preceding section. The receptor-binding domain (RBD) in the spike protein is the most variable part of the coronavirus genome. Mutations can putatively also render the virus resistant to neutralization by host antibodies and thus need to be identified and monitored for the efficacy of antibody therapeutics.

Genomic studies can aid in the identification of the origin of the virus and possible sources of transmission to humans. Zoonoses are infectious diseases transmitted from animals to humans and can evolve to become efficiently transmissible human-to-human infections such as malaria, SARS, HIV, pandemic influenzas and, most recently, COVID-19. Transmission of the causative pathogens from animals to humans and livestock can be via many routes such as infected meat (wet markets, wildlife trade, contaminated feed), direct contact with the pathogen (carcasses, fresh meat), contamination of water and produce, as well as air-borne and vector-borne (mosquitoes, ticks, rodents) routes.

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