NEW DELHI: India has successfully isolated and cultivated the British variant of Sars-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19 disease, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said Saturday.
It is worth mentioning that no other country has so far reported successful isolation and culture of the British variant of SARS-CoV-2, the ICMR reported.
“SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was being tracked through a national network of ICMR laboratories since the early days of the epidemic in India. The variant of the virus in the UK, with all signature changes, now it is isolated and cultivated in the National Institute of Virology (VIN) from clinical samples collected from returnees from the UK, “he said in a tweet.
ICMR said that vero cell lines were used by scientists from ICMR-NIV to grow the British variant of the virus.
A more transmissible strain of Covid-19 is reported to have caused an increase in infections in the UK. According to experts, this strain is more transmissible than other SARS-CoV-2 variants.
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