‘Double mutant’ coronavirus variant found in India
India has detected a “double mutant variant” of the novel coronavirus in 206 samples in the worst-hit western state of Maharashtra, a senior government official said on Wednesday.
The new variant was also detected in nine samples in the capital New Delhi, the director of the National Centre for Disease Control, Sujeet Kumar Singh, told a news conference.
Of the 10,787 samples, 736 were positive for the UK variant, 34 for the South African variant and one for the Brazilian variant.
India reported 47,262 cases and 275 deaths on Wednesday – the sharpest daily rise this year.
The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a group of 10 national laboratories under India’s Health Ministry, carried out genomic sequencing on the samples. Genomic sequencing is a testing process to map the entire genetic code of an organism – in this case, the virus.
The genetic code of the virus works like its instruction manual. 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.
A double mutation, virologist Shahid Jameel explains, is “two mutations coming together in the same virus”.
