Coronavirus vaccines will be just as effective against the new mutant of the virus and there is no reason to panic, the director general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Shekhar Mande, said on Monday.
He said the transmissibility of the new strain N501Y is “a little higher”, but this does not mean that it is more lethal and that more people will die from it.
“There are likely to be differences between certain things like antibodies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the vaccines will be ineffective. The vaccines will be just as effective despite the mutation. So there is no reason to panic,” Mande told PTI . .
Indian institutions have sequenced more than 4,000 coronavirus genomes and submitted them to the Global Initiative for Sharing All Data on Influenza (GISAID).
The Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) of CSIR, Delhi and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, have only performed the sequencing of more than 2,200 sequences of the coronavirus genome in India.
Mande said: “We have not yet found this (particular mutation) in Indian isolates.” He said scientists in India and around the world are closely watching this variant.
The mutation has been observed independently in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa, he said.
“Scientists are watching mutations very closely. It is too early to draw any conclusions,” Mande said.
He said the new variant can be diagnosed with RT-PCR, but it must be evaluated whether it can be equally effective for Rapid Antigen tests. “But there is nothing to suggest that (RAT) is not working at the moment,” he said.
Mande said there could be differences in the monoclonal antibodies (made in the laboratory) that recognize the particular region in a virus that is not otherwise mutated.
“But in the mutated virus, that monoclonal antibody may not work effectively against this modified variant,” he added.
Several European countries – France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Italy – have banned flights from the UK, and the British government has warned that the powerful new strain of the virus was “out of control” and imposed a new strict suspension. -Closed at home from Sunday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week that a new, fast-moving variant of the virus that is 70% more transmissible than existing strains appeared to be driving the rapid spread of new infections in London and southern England. in the last weeks. But he stressed that “there is no evidence to suggest that it is more lethal or causes more serious disease,” or that vaccines will be less effective against it.
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