0
0
Infection figures in India remain at a high level. The Ministry of Health reports 329,942 new infections within 24 hours. A further 3,876 people died in connection with the virus, according to the figures.
Overall, the country of 1.3 billion people now has nearly 23 million infections and 249,992 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified the B.1.617 virus variant, first detected in India, as a global concern.
There is evidence that B.1.617 is more contagious and to some extent resistant to vaccines, WHO CoV expert Maria Van Kerkhove said yesterday in Geneva. “That’s why we classify it as a variant of concern.”
First appeared in October
Earlier, preliminary study results had suggested that B.1.617 was spreading faster than other coronavirus variants circulating in India. However, the WHO previously considered the mutant only “of interest.”
The virus that triggered the global pandemic has already undergone thousands of mutations, some more worrisome than others. India first reported the appearance of genome B.1.617 to the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) sequence database in October 2020.
- source: orf.at/picture:pixabay.com
This post has already been read 806 times!
