Pune Virologists Detect New COVID-19 Strain But Not In Indian Samples: Report

Virologists from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune have reportedly detected a new COVID strain. It was detected in the nasal/throat swabs of two travellers from Brazil, but not from anyone in India. It was also found in travellers returning from the UK.

The new variant called B.1.1.28.2 is believed to be more severe, and a higher number of antibodies are required to neutralize the variant. "We found it earlier but it is not in circulation in the country now so we do not see it as a matter of public health importance," sources from the Virology institute told NDTV.

"We at NIV interrogate variants for their genetic features and study how well they bind to antibodies generated after vaccination and natural infection. The pathogenicity evaluation of the virus shows increased disease severity," they added.

According to a study conducted by 13 scientists including ICMR Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava, the new COVID strain induced body weight loss, viral replication in the respiratory tract and severe lung pathology in infected Syrian hamsters. However, no samples sequenced from India have been detected with the new COVID strain as yet.

Newer variants of COVID-19 have been showing more severity, and have a high infection rate.

According to an ongoing government study, there more than 12,200 "Variants of Concern" in the country. This has been revealed through genetic sequencing, but their presence is minuscule, compared to the Delta variant, as per the study. This variant replaced all the other COVID-19 variants during the second wave of the pandemic.

The study stated that the Delta variant dominated, and drove the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, during April-May this year.

The Delta variant, which is also termed the B.1.617.2 strain is more infectious compared to the Alpha variant, which was first detected in Kent, UK. This was found in the ongoing Indian study by scientists of the Indian SARS COV2 Genomic Consortia and the National Centre for Disease Control.

The study also said that the genome sequencing of about 29,000 COVID-19 case samples has already been done in India and that the B.1.617 variant was found in about 8,900 samples. More than 1000 samples from the latter have been tested for the Delta variant.