Covid-19 variant in India among reasons for huge spike: WHO
GENEVA: A Covid-19 variant spreading in India is more contagious, and there are fears it could be dodging some vaccine protections, contributing to the country's explosive outbreak, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) chief scientist said.
Dr Soumya Swaminathan warned last Saturday that "the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it is an extremely rapidly spreading variant".
India recorded 4,092 deaths yesterday, taking the toll to 242,362.
New cases rose by 403,738, the second day in a row infections crossed 400,000. Total cases stand at 22.3 million.
Dr Swaminathan, 62, an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist, said the B1617 variant, which was first detected in India last October, was clearly a contributing factor to the catastrophe in her homeland.
"There have been many accelerators that are fed into this," she said, stressing that "a more rapidly spreading virus is one of them".
The WHO recently listed B1617 as a "variant of interest".
But so far it has stopped short of adding it to its shortlist of "variants of concern" - a label indicating it is more dangerous than the original version of the virus by being more transmissible, deadly or able to get past vaccine protections.
Several national health authorities, including in the US and Britain, have meanwhile said they consider B1617 a variant of concern, and Dr Swaminathan said she expected the WHO to soon follow suit.
"B1617 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.
But she insisted that the variant alone could not be blamed for the dramatic surge in cases and deaths seen in India, pointing to "huge social mixing and large gatherings" in recent months. - AFP
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