Amid the coronavirus pandemic, a study by top Indian microbiologists have claimed that the strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 disease in India is not as deadly as the ones which are taking a toll in Italy, Spain and the US.
On Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had said that three types of coronavirus strains are doing round in the country.
In an in-depth genomic analysis of rapidly revolving SARS-CoV-2(COVID-19) viruses, a team of scientists led by top Indian microbiologists discovered that strain found in India, matches with the sequence of new coronavirus found in Wuhan, and is less virulent.
However, while the strain is comparatively less virulent, the scientists also suggested that based on data, it is assumed that the virus is mutating very rapidly. It means that the vaccine developed for one strain might not work for other strains circulating in other countries.
If the virus after entering a human body mutates rapidly then it often becomes difficult to counter it.
The study analysed the data taken from different countries including, Italy, Spain, US, China, Nepal and India.
“The study shows that virus is mutating very rapidly. In simpler words, we can say the virus is cor hanging its structure quickly...which means it will be difficult to develop a vaccine for prevention from this dreaded virus.
“Even if we develop a vaccine, we are not sure that the same vaccine will work in other parts of the world, looking at the nature of different strains of COVID-19,” said Rup Lal, a senior scientist with The Energy and Resources Institute(TERI).
On why people are dying more in Spain, Italy and now in the US, scientist Vipin Gupta, a key member of Lal’s team, said in their study it was discovered that virus which changed itself rapidly in Europe and then in the US, was more devastating.
On being asked about the virus isolated here in India, Gupta said: “We cannot conclude but safely say at this point, that strains of virus found in India is less virulent when we compare it with the US’’.” During the study, Indian microbiologist discovered that genomes of six isolates, specifically from the US, were found to harbour unique amino acid and showed amino acid substitutions in proteins. Interpreting the scientific terminology for common man, Gupta, who specialises in Bioinformatics said, “This suggests the severity of mutating viral genome in the population of US. Simply to say the virus strain in US is quite threatening for humans”.
Lal said that different strategies are required and seeing the fast changing characteristic of the virus, treatment would also be difficult.
“Our study is on, and the more we look deep into the sequence the more facts we will be able to dig out,” added Vipin Gupta.