Updated: December 21, 2020 7:18:22 am
Union Minister Harsh Vardhan (Express Photo by Amit Mehra)
The highest advisory body of the Ministry of Health will meet urgently on Monday to discuss the new strain of new coronavirus in the UK, which has raised concerns and led several European countries to halt inbound flights from the UK.
The sources said that experts from AIIMS and the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), along with a representative from the World Health Organization (WHO), will attend the meeting on the new strain, which shows alterations in the spike protein. that could theoretically produce it. more infectious.
Meanwhile, even as India’s top regulator has asked three vaccine manufacturers for additional data on late-stage trials to consider licensing their candidates for emergency use, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said the Sunday that he believes “personally” that India might be in a position to start administering the vaccine to the public “maybe” next month.
“Our first priority has been the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. We don’t want to commit to that. Personally, I think that maybe any week in January, we may be in a position to administer the first Covid vaccine to the people of India, ”the ANI news agency said, quoting Dr. Harsh Vardhan.
Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech have submitted emergency use authorization requests to the Central Medicines Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) for their vaccine candidates.
“The Joint Monitoring Group headed by the Director General for Health Services will discuss this issue (of the UK strain) and make a recommendation to the Union Ministry of Health. In addition to experts from AIIMS, ICMR and WHO, the meeting will also be attended by epidemiologists and experts from outside the government, ”said a prominent source.
British media reported on Sunday that Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands have announced flight bans carrying passengers from the UK, and that France and Germany were also considering a similar measure.
The Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, which randomly carries out genetic sequencing of Covid-19 positive samples in Britain, has identified a new set of mutations in the virus, called VUI-202012/0. In a report on Saturday, COG-UK said that one of the most important mutations, N501Y, occurs in the region of the peak protein, the receptor-binding domain (RBD), which the virus uses to bind to the human ACE2 receptor. . “Changes in this region of the spike protein can cause the virus to change its ACE2-binding specificity and alter antibody recognition,” said COG-UK.
However, the consortium has emphasized that “at this time, there is no reason to believe that any of the mutations discussed here will affect the efficacy of the vaccine.” The mutation has caused 1,100 new infections in 60 local authority areas, said UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Earlier on December 14, Hancock had told the House of Commons that initial analysis revealed that the new variant “may be associated” with the recent increase in cases in south-east England.
The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threat Advisory Group (NERVTAG), which advises the British government, has said it has “moderate confidence that VUI-202012/01 demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants.”
But he has also said that “there is currently insufficient data to draw any conclusion” about the mechanism of increased transmissibility and higher viral load. “The location of the mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the spike glycoprotein raises the possibility that this variant is antigenically distinct from previous variants. Four probable reinfections have been identified among 915 subjects with this variant, but more work is needed to compare this reinfection rate with comparable data sets, ”said the advisory group.
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