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At a time when mass vaccination against COVID-19 is underway across India, the detection of a variant of Covid-19 by scientists that has two mutations coming together at the same time, has caused an alarm. According to report, a “double mutant” variant is a virus strain that carries two mutations. It’s not yet clear how many infections have been linked to this double mutant variant, or whether the strain is any more dangerous. Some 10,787 samples from 18 states in India also showed up 771 cases of known variants – 736 of the UK, 34 of the South African and one Brazilian. Mutations in viruses are common but most of them are insignificant and do not cause any change in its ability to transmit or cause serious infection. But some mutations, like the ones in the UK or South Africa variant lineages, can make the virus more infectious and in some cases even deadlier. India’s top Virologist Shahid Jameel explained that a “double mutation in key areas of the virus’s spike protein may increase these risks and allow the virus to escape the immune system”. How dangerous a mutation is depends on where in the virus it’s happening. For instance, the South Africa variant has mutations that change the structure of the spike protein, which appear to affect the receptor binding domain — the part of the spike protein most important for attaching to and infecting cells. Researchers are now investigating whether it could help the virus partly escape the effects of vaccines. Mutations in the spike gene can make the virus inherently “better” at infecting people or can help the virus to escape neutralising antibodies. This means if the virus mutates in the “right way”, it can re-infect someone who has already recovered from Covid-19.But scientists say re-infections will be very mild compared to primary infections in people who are vaccinated or who recovered already from an earlier case of Covid-19. However, if the virus can use re-infection to spread, then it would be “penetrating” herd immunity, says Dr Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport. This puts the most vulnerable people at risk of severe disease, since the virus can move through the herd to reach them. Virologists explained that all viruses evolve over time, and sometimes make changes when they replicate, causing mutations. Some mutations have little effect — but others could make the variant more easily transmissible, or cause infections with more severe symptoms. The spike in COVID-19 cases in India during the current month(March) has set speculations that it was due to the mutant virus. In February, COVID-19 cases dropped by 90% with hardly 10,000 cases. By March 23, the number shot up to over 45,000 and by March 25, it rose to a little over 50,000 cases. However, union health ministry officials say the variants are not linked to a spike in cases in India. The latest surge – which began this month -comes during what some experts have called a “delicate phase” for India – with the healthcare system already exhausted from a year-long battle against the coronavirus. The detection of the double mutant virus could spike vaccine hesitancy and affect efforts for mass immunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mutating viruses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}