Indian variant sparking crisis: Top WHO scientist
According to Soumya Swaminathan, the virus from India ‘is an extremely rapidly spreading variant’
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 said on Saturday.
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”.
India on Saturday registered more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths in just 24 hours, and well more than 400,000 new infections.
Swaminathan, an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist, 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 her homeland. “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 - which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics - as a “variant of interest”. But so far, it has stopped short of adding it to its short list of “variant of concern (VOC)”.
Several national health authorities, including in the United States and Britain, have meanwhile said they consider B.1.617 a variant of concern, 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, the UK and Bangladesh have all detected more cases of the Indian variant. South Africa’s health ministry has said four cases have been recorded in the country. Eleven cases of another variant first detected in the UK and known as B.1.1.7 have also been found.
Seven cases of the Indian variant have been found in the UK’s Bedfordshire county, hours after health officials elevated the subtype from under investigation to a VOC amid a rise in cases.
For Bangladesh, it was the first case of the variant first identified in India, the country’s health directorate announced on Saturday.