"There Is No Such Thing As Indian Strain": Government Denies Reports Of Double Mutations

Double Mutations: Amid the rise in coronavirus cases, the government today denied reports of a novel, double mutant strain identified in India. In a week, cases of the UK pressure have risen to 71 and those of the South Africa variant has reached 13.

As yet 807 cases have been recognized of the UK variant of the virus in India, the South African variant has increased to 47 and one of the Brazilian pressure. Reportedly, these have been confirmed through the genome sequencing of over 11,000 samples across 10 national labs.

The Indian government refuted that strains of the Covid virus with double mutations were at the bottom of the faster spread in the nation.

Balram Bhargava, Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) declared, "There is no such thing as an Indian strain. There is no cause for panic. Mutations are sporadic, not significant". 

"They are not significant as far as India is concerned and their relationship with increased severity and transmissibility has not been established in the Indian context," Bhargav declared while speaking of double mutations.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview with NDTV, Shashank Joshi, a member of the COVID-19 task force in Maharashtra, constantly emphasised that a "different strain" was responsible for the rapid increase in cases in the state.

Dr. Joshi stated that previously in an interview with the publication, he mentioned, “...there was a link between the Amravati variant and Covid and no one took it seriously. In fact, the government of India denied it and said that there is no such thing existing”.   

“The Vijay Medical College Microbiology team that time had identified clearly a strain which is similar to the UK strain, which is fast spreading," he added. 

Read more on the Ministry of Health's notification on the new double mutation variant of COVID-19 here.