The World Health Organization says the coronavirus strain present in India is a “worrisome variable”.

The variable known as B.1.617 is being studied by scientists around the world for its role in the fast-growing boom in Covid-19 in India, which has seen more than 366,000 new daily cases reported on Monday. According to the World Health Organization, the variant has already spread to more than 30 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan.

The boom in India rose last month. Hospitals are overcrowded In the most affected city in the country. “The pattern now is that one person in the family understands, and the whole family seems to understand. This is in contrast to the first wave. This is the opposite of the first wave. This is the opposite of the first wave. This is the opposite of the first wave.” Said Chief Scientist at WHO Dr. Sumiya Swaminathan in an interview, so I think what we see is more. Transferable.

The alternative is the fourth classified by the World Health Organization. The United Nations agency also gave the same name The variable B / 1/7 / It was first recognized in southeast England, The variable is 1.35 They are found in South Africa. And the P. 1 variable Researchers discovered it in Brazil.

The World Health Organization does not generally recommend closing borders. Countries should make a careful assessment before imposing restrictions and avoid any unnecessary disruption to global travel. However, several independent countries have imposed travel restrictions for countries where the variables of concern have been identified.

The result is that the WHO statement may make India more isolated from the world.

Variant B.1.617 contains 13 mutations, two of which are similar to those that appear separately in the other variants. In the other variants, one mutation is associated with making the virus more contagious and better avoiding the antibodies, while the other is similar to one that shows signs of its ability to bypass some of the body’s immune responses.

Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Director of the World Health Organization, said at a news conference on Monday that a study awaiting peer review indicated “minimal bias” regarding the B.1.617 variable. More details will be announced on Tuesday. No results have been reported that indicate that the currently approved vaccines against the variant are not effective.

“What we know now [is] Dr. Vaccines work, diagnosis works, and it is the same treatment that the normal virus does, Swaminathan said at the press conference. “There is no need to change any of this, and in fact people should go ahead and get the vaccine available to them.”

Ravindra Gupta, one of the lead authors of the peer-reviewed study, said that some laboratory studies indicated that large mutations B.1.617 carried could help pass it on to some people who have previously been vaccinated or have been vaccinated with Covid-19. If this turns out to be the case, vaccines still need to protect people from severe cases of the disease. “On the individual level, vaccination is still great,” said Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge.

The variant was first discovered in October in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. A number of other variants have been discovered in India, including B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P1.

Various variants of the variable B.1.617 were identified. On Friday, UK health authorities identified a member of the B.1.617 strain as a variant of concern and added it to the list of viral variants that remain closely monitored.

The status change came after a jump in cases identified in the past week. Public Health England said it had recorded 520 confirmed cases of this type as of May 5, an increase of 318 from the previous week. About half of the cases are related to international travel.

The UK had the worst number of deaths in Europe from Covid-19, but cases and fatalities are declining thanks in part to a rapid vaccination campaign. Prime Minister

Boris Johnson

On Friday, he said the country needed to be careful about the new alternative.

Scientists from the United Kingdom said on a conference call with reporters on Monday that the alternative appears to be portable, at least as much as B.1.1.7.

Sharon Peacock, director of the UK’s Covid-19 Genome Consortium, an alliance of labs and universities that sequences virus samples, said the initial assessment was based on genetic mutations and epidemiological modeling of the variant. She said more data is needed to reach more firm conclusions and there is still no evidence that the variant causes more severe disease than the existing strains.

Professor Peacock said, “There is tremendous uncertainty about this now.”

Write to Suryatapa Bhattacharya unter [email protected]Jason Douglas under [email protected] And Drew Henshaw under [email protected]