New strain of Covid-19 unlikely to affect India’s vaccine strategy: scientists

Senior Indian scientists have said the Covid-19 mutations can be addressed by the vaccines which are being developed across the world and are unlikely to affect India's vaccine strategy.

"The genetic structure of every virus changes. This Covid-19 virus is slow to mutate. There is no reason to worry as yet," reports our New Delhi correspondent quoting epidemiologist Raman Gangakhedkar, former head scientist at Indian Council of Medical Research, India's apex research forum.

According to epidemiologists, it is quite common for any virus to mutate and the vaccine candidates being manufactured in India include jabs with various components besides spike protein which is related to the new strain found in the UK and some other countries.

Director General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Shekhar C Mande has said that the novel coronavirus has mutated several times since the first case was discovered in Wuhan, China and mutations of the virus have occurred in India as well but termed these mutations as "minor."

"The mutations in the country have been minor and have been similar to that world over. I believe the vaccines that are being developed will be able to tackle the mutations," he told The Indian Express.

Mande said that while the transmissibility of the new strain, named N501Y, may be higher, this was not indicative of more fatal symptoms or increased chances of death.

According to Suneela Garg, President of Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, the latest mutation of Covid-19 virus was unlikely to hit the efficacy of the vaccines being made.

Given the developments abroad, the CSIR and the Department of Biotechnology will plan an expansion of the scale of surveillance, said Director of CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology Anurag Agarwal.

This, experts said, can point to the emerging mutations of the virus and help in policy-framing.

The Indian Health Ministry may go for gene sequencing of those who came to India from the UK and tested positive for Covid-19 in the last four weeks, sources said.

While there is as yet no evidence of the presence of the new mutation in India, epidemiologists are not ruling it out altogether and hence the need for surveillance of gene sequencing.