The new strain of Coronavirus that was recently identified circulating in the United Kingdom has not been detected by India yet and the curb on flight services was a measure of caution, top government officials reportedly said on Monday.
Experts in the UK said over the weekend that the latest strain detected in the UK is feared to be more infectious and more than 70 per cent more transmissible. Over 40 nations, including India, suspended flight operations after the new strain was detected.
ICMR experts have maintained that the samples did not detect UK strain. In any of our samples, we have not found anything related to the UK strain so far. “Whether it is in our National Institute of Virology (NIV) laboratory in Pune or any other genome sequencing laboratories across the country, there is no evidence of this mutation in our samples,” said Dr. Samiran Panda, Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
It is a continuous phase that began some eight months ago. The method is that if there is some new mutation detected in the virus, the alteration is compared to previous mutations. So far, only minor mutations have been seen in the virus, which is not of much significance, and nothing of this unique UK strain has been detected by anyone, Dr. Panda reportedly said.
Genome sequencing experts also state that they haven’t yet come across this unique strain.
We’re always cautious, because it’s not like the strain in the UK has mutated, and we’re going to start searching for this mutation all of a sudden. It will appear in the surveillance if there is a mutation, but there is nothing of significance so far,’ Dr Panda allegedly added.
At a prominent government laboratory, a senior virologist said they have not identified the latest strain so far. There are two things, antigenic drift and antigenic shift, where drift is a slight change and shift implies a substantial change.
