The Central Government on Saturday said that a total of 90 persons have been detected with the new “more transmissible” UK coronavirus mutant strain. They are kept in physical isolation in health facilities. Of 33,000 UK flyers who arrived in India from November 25 to December 23 last year, the Government has been able to trace just 5,000 passengers.
Health experts say that there may be many more within the community who might be acting as super spreaders as they are yet not in the detection radar. The new cases have mostly been reported from Maharashtra — Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Raigad.
On Friday, Madhya Pradesh reported its first case of the new mutated strain from the UK. The patient, a 39-year-old man, had returned to Indore from the UK last month and has tested
positive for the new coronavirus strain. Officials say he is asymptomatic.
A day earlier, three more people were found positive with the new UK-variant of Covid-19 in Maharashtra, taking the State’s tally to 11. Officials said all the 11 cases were asymptomatic.
As of January 6, the number of people who had tested positive for the new UK variant was 73 while on December 30, six cases were found to be infected with the new variant of the virus known as “N501Y”.
The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by several countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
The variant is the result of multiple mutations in the spike protein of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as well as mutations in other genomic regions of the RNA virus.
Preliminary analysis suggests that it is more transmissible than previously circulating variants. COG-UK identified one of these mutations as “N501Y”, in an area of the spike protein that binds to a key protein in the human cell, the ACE2 receptor. This was an indication that the alterations may, theoretically, result in the virus becoming more infectious. “Efforts are underway to confirm whether or not any of these mutations are contributing to increased transmission,” the experts said.
