NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India reported a new variant of the coronavirus on Wednesday, as it struggled with the highest single-day count of new infections and deaths this year.
The variant, described by officials as a “double mutant”, was found in more than 200 samples in the most affected western state of Maharashtra, which is home to Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
Health officials said the new variant was not detected in sufficient numbers to relate it to the increase in cases in Maharashtra and other states, including Kerala and Punjab.
Epidemiologists have said that the term “double mutant” refers to an entirely new variant that has the characteristics of two variants already identified.
“Double mutant is not a scientific term. It is just another mutant that appears to be unique to India, ”said Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi.
“Is there a reason to be concerned with this particular variant? Not yet, because we have no evidence that these variants are more transmissible or more lethal than we already have, ”he added.
About 20% of the samples containing the new variant in Maharashtra were found in the city of Nagpur, an important commercial and logistical center, the director of the National Center for Disease Control, Sujeet Kumar Singh, told a news conference.
VACCINES
The variant is evolving, Singh said, adding that nine of those samples were also found in New Delhi, which has seen a steady increase in infections in recent weeks.
The two approved vaccines from India – one developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and the other a homemade injection from Bharat Biotech – are effective against variants of the virus first identified in Britain and Brazil, health officials said.
On Wednesday, India reported 47,262 new infections in the previous 24-hour period, the highest since early November, bringing its overall count to 11.7 million. Only the United States and Brazil have a higher number of cases.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours has risen to 275, the highest this year, bringing the total to 160,441, government data showed.
Several states have announced the ban on large gatherings before the Hindu festival of Holi this weekend.
The federal government also announced that it was expanding its national vaccination campaign to include all people over the age of 45 starting in April.
India ranks third in the world in terms of total vaccinations, behind the United States and China, but it occupies a much lower position on a per capita basis, showed the website Our World in Data.
Reporting by Neha Arora and Rama Venkat; Editing by Kim Coghill, Sanjeev Miglani and Gareth Jones