India’s ‘double mutant’ strain of Coronavirus identified in US

The ‘double mutant’ strain of Covid-19 invoking the current spike of the cases in India has also been detected in the US with the first confirmed infected recorded on Monday.

The strain was discovered in a patient who was tested in California-based Stanford Health Care Clinical Virology Laboratory as per the news reports quoting the mediaperson of the organization. According to The Hill, the case was recorded in San Francisco Bay Area.

The novel strain has been described as ‘double mutant’ as it holds two mutations of the virus that invoked the pandemic. It has affected the US with the rising concerns  about the emerging variations engendered by the vaccination rates – with over 3 million per day and a record of 4 million on Saturday.

Peter Chin-Hong, infectiois diseases expert, University of California, San Francisco revealed to San Francisco Chronicle, “This Indian variant contains two mutations in the same virus for the first time, previously seen on separate variants.”

The new strain has triggered the spike in the daily new cases over past few weeks.Starting from 9,100 on February 15, the fresh infections count has surged to over 103,000 on April, as per the Covid-19 tracker of the US-based John Hopkins University.

An answer was anticipated from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmation adhering to new strain from India and for the intricate details about the threat carried by it and the question about its resistance to three vaccines administered in the US now – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson.

To which CDC stated that the vaccines presently used in the US are effective against the mutant variants. CDC said, “So far, studies suggest that antibodies generated through vaccination with currently authorised vaccines recognise these variants…. This is being closely investigated and more studies are underway .”

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