Researchers are investigating if a COVID-19 with multiple mutations found in India is more deadly and resistant to existing vaccines
KEY:
- A new threat has emerged in India's fight against COVID — a triple-mutant variant of the virus.
- The new strain was found in samples in Bengal, and may have evolved from existing double mutations.
- Researchers in India are investigating whether the new threat may affect vaccine efficacy.
As India contends with its second major wave of COVID cases and a double-mutated variant of the virus, it now faces a new threat — a triple-mutant variant.
Scientists found two triple-mutant varieties in patient samples in four states: Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh. Researchers in the country have dubbed it the "Bengal strain" and say it has the potential to be even more infectious than the double-mutant variant.
This is because three COVID variants have merged to form a new, possibly deadlier variant.
Sreedhar Chinnaswamy, a researcher from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in India, told the Times of India that the variant also carried the E484K mutation, a characteristic found in the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.
Reference: INSIDER
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