India’s Covid strain found in 17 countries

WHO so far hasn’t yet declared the new coronavirus strain a ‘variant of concern’

GENEVA/BERLIN: The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that a variant of Covid-19 feared to be contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases in India has been found in well over a dozen countries.

The UN health agency said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 first found in India had as of Tuesday been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database “from at least 17 countries”.

“Most sequences were uploaded from India, the UK, the US and Singapore,” the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic.

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 declaring it a “variant of concern”. That label would indicate that it is more dangerous that the original version of the virus by for instance being more transmissible, deadly or able to dodge vaccine protections.

The coronavirus disease has now killed more than 3.1 million people worldwide and infected nearly 149 million.

The WHO acknowledged that its preliminary modelling based on sequences submitted to GISAID indicates “that B.1.617 has a higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility”.

It stressed that other variants circulating at the same time were also showing increased transmissibility, and that the combination “may be playing a role in the current resurgence in this country”.

“Indeed, studies have highlighted that the spread of the second wave has been much faster than the first,” the WHO said. It highlighted though that “other drivers” could be contributing to the surge, including lax adherence to public health measures as well as mass gatherings.

“Further investigation is needed to understand the relative contribution of these factors,” it said. The UN agency stressed that “further robust studies” into the characteristics of B.1.617 and other variants, including impacts on transmissibility, severity and the risk of reinfection, were needed.

BioNTech: Vaccine works against Indian variant BioNTech co-founder Ugur Sahin on Wednesday voiced confidence that the vaccine that his company jointly developed with Pfizer works against the Indian variant of the coronavirus.

“We are still testing the Indian variant, but the Indian variant has mutations that we have already tested for and which our vaccine works against, so I am confident,” said Sahin.

“The coronavirus vaccine is cleverly built and I’m convinced the bulwark will hold. And if we have to strengthen the bulwark again, then we will do it, that I’m not worried about,” the BioNTech co-founder said.