{"id":14544,"date":"2021-03-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/uncategorized\/25-03-2021\/double-mutant-variant-of-covid-19\/"},"modified":"2021-03-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T00:00:00","slug":"double-mutant-variant-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/25-03-2021\/double-mutant-variant-of-covid-19","title":{"rendered":"Double Mutant Variant of Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In News<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recently, the<strong> Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics<\/strong> (INSACOG) has detected a new <strong>double mutant variant of Covid-19<\/strong>, along with the <strong>three variants<\/strong> from the <strong>United Kingdom<\/strong>, <strong>South Africa<\/strong>, and<strong> Brazil<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the New Variant<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The new double mutant variant has <strong>E484Q mutation<\/strong> which can escape <strong>antibody neutralisation<\/strong> and <strong>L452R mutation<\/strong> which is associated with <strong>increased infectivity<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>It has been termed as a \u201c<strong>variant of interest<\/strong>\u201d, which requires further investigation to establish a direct link with the ongoing surge.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reasons for Surge<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The main reason is a <strong>large<\/strong> <strong>pool of susceptible populations<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Whenever this population<strong> lowers its guard<\/strong> and <strong>does not follow Covid-19-appropriate behaviour<\/strong>, it gets infected by a variant or the normal virus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Prevention<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Viruses will <strong>not mutate if they are not allowed to replicate<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, the <strong>chain of transmission has to be suppressed<\/strong> in order to stop mutations of the virus.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Testing<\/strong>, <strong>quarantine<\/strong>, and <strong>containment <\/strong>will further limit the spread of the virus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Mutations in Covid-19<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Like any other organism, the Covid-19 is also <strong>constantly mutating<\/strong>, with some changes in its genetic structure happening in every replication cycle.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>RNA strand of the virus will replicate<\/strong> and will<strong> make mistakes resulting in mutations<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Most of these mutations are <strong>inconsequential <\/strong>and <strong>do not alter the overall nature or behaviour<\/strong> of the virus.<\/li>\n<li>These mutations can introduce important changes, <strong>helping the virus to adapt or survive<\/strong> <strong>better<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Three kinds of changes<\/strong> keenly watched are those that\n<ul>\n<li>Increase the ability of the virus to spread faster.<\/li>\n<li>Cause more severe disease in the infected person.<\/li>\n<li>Help the virus escape the immune response.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>India has the<strong> second-highest number of people infected<\/strong> with the Covid-19 during the epidemic but it has done very<strong> few genome sequences <\/strong>of the different variants in circulation.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genome Sequencing<\/strong> is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism&#8217;s genome at a single time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>INSACOG was set up<\/strong> for this purpose only with an <strong>objective <\/strong>to sequence the samples from at least 5% of all the infected cases through a network of ten laboratories.<\/li>\n<li>Studying genetic changes in the organism is <strong>important for understanding<\/strong> the <strong>origin<\/strong>, <strong>transmission <\/strong>and <strong>impact <\/strong>of the virus on patients.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reasons for low genome sequencing in India<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Lack of funds<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>States have not been proactively sending their samples to the laboratories<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Classification of Variants<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Variants of Concern<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The three variants from the<strong> UK, Brazil, and South Africa <\/strong>have been termed as Variants of Concern (VOC) by the <strong>World Health Organisation<\/strong> (WHO).\n<ul>\n<li>Their <strong>genetic mutations<\/strong> make them <strong>more likely to escape the human immune system<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Both<strong> Indian vaccines<\/strong> (<strong>Covishield and Covaxin<\/strong>) are <strong>effective against<\/strong> both the <strong>UK and Brazil variants<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>research<\/strong> regarding the <strong>South African variant<\/strong> is ongoing at the moment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Variants of Interest<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>These are mutations found in the spike protein region of the virus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Variants Under Investigation<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>These are the variants that need a detailed investigation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/india\/coronanvirus-double-mutant-variant-found-no-link-with-surge-7243769\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In News Recently, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG) has detected a new double mutant variant of Covid-19, along with the three variants from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil. About the New Variant The new double mutant variant has E484Q mutation which can escape antibody neutralisation and L452R mutation which is associated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[30,47],"class_list":["post-14544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-gs-2","tag-health"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-images.nextias.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/format=auto\/ca\/uploads\/2023\/07\/30940756268277current-affairs.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}