Scientists in the United Kingdom have discovered that the Indian COVID-19 variant is highly infectious and more contagious than other coronavirus mutations.
"Transmission of this variant is currently faster than that of the B.1.1.7 variant," the U.K.'s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies wrote Friday in a document obtained by NPR. "It is a realistic possibility that it is as much as 50% more transmissible," the document added.
If this is so, it means the Indian COVID-19 variant called B.1.617.2 is one of the most infectious virus around the world.
NEW DELHI, INDIA - MARCH 29: Indian migrant workers and laborers along with their families stuck in the national capital, with and without protective masks crowd to board buses to return to their native villages, as nationwide lockdown continues over the highly contagious coronavirus (COVID-19) on March 29, 2020, in Ghaziabad, on the outskirts New Delhi, India. India is under a 21-day lockdown to fight the spread of the virus while security personnel on the roads are enforcing the restrictions in many cases by using force, the workers of the country's unorganized sector are bearing the brunt of the curfew-like situation. The lockdown has already disproportionately hurt marginalized communities due to loss of livelihood and lack of food, shelter, health, and other basic needs. The lockdown has left tens of thousands of out-of-work migrant workers stranded, with rail and bus services shut down. According to international labor organizations, 90 percent of India's workforce is employed in the informal sector and most do not have access to pensions, sick leave, paid leave, or any kind of insurance. The closing of state borders has caused disruption in the supply of essential goods, leading to inflation and fear of shortages.
Indian COVID-19 Variant More Contagious
Science Times previously reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) designated India's COVID-19 version as a variant of concern. In the latest announcement, WHO said the Indian COVID-19 variant is more infectious than other coronavirus versions.
WHO remained baffled as to how much the said COVID-19 variant led to the catastrophic surge that has engulfed India in recent weeks. It cautioned that India, like many other nations, only sequences a small percentage of positive samples. The case, according to WHO, made it impossible to draw firm conclusions regarding B.1.617 due to the lack of surveillance.
WHO's report comes despite mounting criticism of the Indian government's reaction to the deadly virus outbreak and demands for national restrictions to reduce the death toll, as hospitals are overburdened and crematoria fire nonstop.
Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biology professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said the Indian COVID-19 variant called the B.1.617.2 mutation seems to outpace the U.K. Variant.
India had a few primary mutations unlike other variants of concerns. But not anything else that bothered Bedford at first. However, in the last week, he's found that an increasing number of newly sequenced samples in India are of this new variant rather than the U.K. variant.
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"When this variant was first noticed weeks ago, I didn't ascribe that much to it," Bedford told NBC News. He said that at the time that he attributed the increase in India to other causes such as poor vaccination rates and a lack of social distance.
Bedford found the findings "important," but he cautions that the evidence should be taken "with a grain of salt" for the time being because of other factors at play in the spread of infection.
It's difficult to predict how this version would do in the United States, which has seen a drop in new cases in recent weeks. Suppose the variant becomes more prevalent in some nations, people can face an increased pressure to vaccinate citizens even more rapidly to stem the spread.
Will COVID-19 Vaccines Protect People from Indian Coronavirus Variant?
COVID-19 vaccines will still function against B1617, according to experts, but they could be marginally less successful. Ravi Gupta of Cambridge University tweeted that vaccines would not shield people with "poor immune responses" from infection.
working on it. likely vaccines will protect against severe illness and death but not against infection in those with poorer immune responses.
— Gupta Lab (@GuptaR_lab) April 19, 2021
But Shane Crotty, a virologist, and professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, is hopeful that the vaccinations will eventually prove successful in the real world as well as in a lab trial against this variant.
A study titled "Effectiveness of the bnt162b2 COVID-19 Vaccine Against the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 Variants" said Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is 97% effective in avoiding serious disease and death in patients infected with any form of coronavirus, including variants.
"The fact that there is real-world data that shows the Pfizer vaccine works very well against the South African variant, it's quite likely that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will be very effective against these new Indian variants, as well," Crotty said in an NBC report.
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