‘New virus strain unlikely to affect India’s vax strategy’

PREPARING FOR THE VACCINE

‘New virus strain unlikely to affect India’s vax strategy’

There Is No Reason To Worry As Of Now: Top Epidemiologist

Sushmi Dey & Durgesh Nandan Jha TNN

New Delhi:23.12.2020

The new variant of coronavirus circulating in the UK is unlikely to impact India’s vaccine strategy as the shots being developed are expected to be effective against the new strain and re-infections, in case they happen, would be milder, experts said.

They added that vaccine candidates under regulatory evaluation in India included shots with various other components apart from spike protein — which is related to this particular strain — and this would help the vaccines maintain their efficacy. Even as the new variant set off an alarm, epidemiologists in India maintained that mutations were common to viruses and people must continue wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing and hand hygiene.

“There is no reason to worry as of now. Every virus changes its genetic structure. This is an RNA virus and is likely to change often but this virus is a better virus compared to others like influenza or HIV. This virus has a very low rate of mutation,” said top epidemiologist Dr Raman Gangakhedkar, formerly head-scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

According to the hypotheses presented by the UK consortium, unusual genetic divergence of lineage B.1.1.7 (one of the mutations) may have resulted, at least in part, from virus evolution with a chronically-infected individual. It has been seen that patients with cancer remain Covid positive for a long time.

“Although such infections are rare, and onward transmission from them presumably even rarer, they are not improbable given the ongoing large number of new infections,” the UK report said. The mutation may well be present in India and tests were needed to check for it, experts said.

According to Dr Suneela Garg, professor of excellence and president of Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, the mutated virus is 1.7 times more infective.

“It can affect even those who have been exposed to Covid-19 already. But the symptoms are likely to be mild,” she said. Dr Garg added that the mutation may not affect the effectiveness of vaccines under development.

Dr N K Mehra, honorary emeritus scientist at ICMR and former AIIMS dean, said viruses mutated, just like the one causing common cold changed every year. Dr Mehra said changes observed in the Sars-CoV2 were probably caused by the virus’s attempt to escape the immune system and the exact impact of this mutation was yet to be ascertained.

FOLLOW HYGIENE: Epidemiologists in India maintained that mutations were common to viruses and people must continue wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing