Just when several countries had started administering the vaccine for the coronavirus, the UK government announced that it was fighting a contagious new variant of COVID-19 due to which Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed the country’s most stringent lockdown up until now.
Down below are 6 burning questions about the new variant and what it does:
The new variant, which scientists have named “VUI – 202012/01” includes a genetic mutation in the “spike” protein that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus uses to infect human cells.
On Tuesday, December 29, the Union Health Ministry asserted that the vaccines under development would also work against the variants detected in the UK and South Africa.
As per reports, so far, the mutations only seem to have affected transmissibility, not pathogenicity (how the virus causes disease). However, experts in the U.K. are reviewing the rates at which people with the variant are hospitalized and how long they stay, as well as deaths.
According to British researchers and public officials, the virus happens to be more transmissible than other versions of the coronavirus with estimates ranging from 50 per cent to 70 per cent more infectious.
On December 29, India recorded six cases of the coronavirus of the mutant strain of COVID-19 from patients who recently returned from Britain. According to the government statement, three samples are in NIMHANS of Bengaluru, two in CCMB, Hyderabad and one in NIV, Pune.
New COVID-19 variants were witnessed ever since the virus was first detected in China nearly a year ago. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) viruses often mutate, or develop small changes, as they reproduce and move through a population — something “that’s natural and expected.”