Variant deepening India’s crisis, says top WHO scientist
According to Soumya Swaminathan, the variant from India ‘is an extremely rapidly spreading’ one
GENEVA/LONDON: A Covid-19 variant spreading in India is more contagious and may be dodging vaccine protections, contributing to the country’s explosive outbreak, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) chief scientist has said.
In an interview with AFP, Soumya Swaminathan warned that “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant”.
Swaminathan said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in India last October, was a contributing factor to the catastrophe unfolding in India. “There have been many accelerators that are fed into this,” the 62-year-old said, stressing that “a more rapidly spreading virus is one of them”. The WHO recently listed B.1.617 as a “variant of interest”. But so far, it has stopped short of adding it to its list of “variant of concern”. Some national health authorities, including in the US and Britain, said they consider B.1.617 a VOC, and Swaminathan said she expected the WHO to soon follow suit. “B 1.617 is likely to be a variant of concern because it has some mutations that increase transmission, and which also potentially could make (it) resistant to antibodies that are generated by vaccination or by natural infection,” she said.
SA, UK and B’desh detect cases of Indian variant
South Africa, Britain and Bangladesh have all detected more cases of the Indian variant. South Africa’s health ministry said four cases have been recorded in the country. Seven cases of the Indian variant have been found in the UK’s Bedfordshire county. In Bangladesh, it was detected as the country’s first case of the variant first identified in India.
The EU Commission did not renew its order for AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the EU’s internal market commissioner said on Sunday. “We have not renewed the order for after June. We’ll see what will happen next,” Thierry Breton said.