New Delhi- After the much dreaded double mutant variant, a new triple mutant variant has emerged in India. This has emerged as a brand new challenge in our fight against the ongoing second wave of the novel coronavirus adding to the already existing panic and mass hysteria.
This triple variant is a combination of three different COVID strains fusing to form a new single variant. This new variant has been detected from various parts of the country.
The states of Maharashtra, Delhi, and West Bengal are speculated to have covid cases induced by this new triple variant.
The international community of scientists believes that it is because of the new COVID strains that the world witnesses sudden new surges of cases.
Madhukar Pai, professor of epidemiology at McGill University said that this new variant is a more transmissible variant that can easily make people fall sick very quickly.
"We have to keep tweaking vaccines. For that, we need to understand the disease. But we need sequencing on war footing," said Dr. Pai.
Dr. Pai added by saying that the delay in detecting the double mutant virus resulted in a massive spike in the cases.
In India, where genome sequencing is done for less than one percent of all the cases, it proves to a rather herculean task.
Due to the increased transmission rate of the new triple mutant variant, it has the potential to infect children too.
It is worrisome to note that two out of the three variants in the new triple mutant appears to be more resistant to antibodies. Some scientists believe that this new variant has some ability to counter the body's naturally acquired immunity to the novel coronavirus. Even though today the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) disclosed that Covaxin can neutralize the various mutations including the double mutant strain of COVID, the emergence of this new triple mutant variation poses a serious doubt to the ICMR's claims.
Meanwhile, India as of Tuesday almost crossed the 3 lakh mark after recording 2,95,041 fresh new cases of the novel coronavirus, the highest one-day spike recorded in the country so far. The cases of COVID-19 induced fatalities recorded in the last 24 hours from across the country amounts to 2,023 taking the total tally of deaths to 1,82,601. The active caseloads now stand at 21,59,134 taking the total number of cases recorded as of today to more than 1.56 crores.
Also read- Covaxin Affective Against Multiple Variants Including Double Mutant Coronavirus Variant: ICMR.