The ICMR said that no country reported isolation and culture of the UK coronavirus strain (representative)
New Delhi:
India has successfully cultivated the new coronavirus strain, which originated in the UK, the Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) said on Saturday.
In a tweet, the ICMR stated that no country has yet reported the successful isolation and culture of the UK variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Culture is the process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, usually outside their natural environment.
“The UK variant of the virus, with all the signature changes, is now isolated and successfully grown at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) from clinical samples collected from returnees from the United Kingdom,” said the ICMR.
India has successfully cultivated the new viral strain on the horizon (UK variant of SARS-CoV-2). # ICMRFIGHTSCOVID19# IndiaFightsCOVID19#CoronaUpdatesInIndia#COVID-19# Unite2FightCorona@MoHFW_INDIA@PIB_India@DrHVoffice@drharshvardhan@AshwiniKChoubey@icmr_nivpic.twitter.com/vaCMQMSHOJ
– ICMR (@ICMRDELHI) January 2, 2021
The research organization said the vero cell lines were used by ICMR-NIV scientists to grow the British variant of the virus.
The United Kingdom recently announced that the newly identified strain of the virus found in its population was up to 70% more infectious.
A total of 29 people have tested positive for the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in India so far, the Union Ministry of Health said on Friday.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by the NDTV team and is published from a syndicated feed.)