In what should come as a big relief, scientists and health experts here have dispelled fears about the news related to the discovery of mutant form of the novel coronavirus from Malaysia as being “10 times more infectious”. They said that it is not a concern for India as the strain is already widely prevalent here and isn’t any more virulent than the one originating in Wuhan.
Two-days ago Malaysia’s Director General of Health had raised alarm over Facebook that the D614G strain of the virus was discovered from a cluster, including a restaurant owner returning from India calling it “10 times more infectious and easily spread by an individual super spreader.”
Virologist Upasana Ray said that the mutation may have just been reported in Malaysia but is not new for the world. “We saw it happening in April and it eventually dominated many countries. It is new for Malaysia but is not a new mutation,” said the senior scientist at Kolkata’s CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology said.
While some reports claim the mutation is capable of enhancing the infectivity of the virus, this is not well established and also does not necessarily indicate more
virulence or harmfulness of the disease.
Ray pointed out that even a highly infectious and transmissible variant of the virus might actually have a lesser ability to cause disease in humans.
Rajinder K Dhamija, head of the Department of Neurologists, Dr Lady Hardinge echoed similar
sentiments saying that mutation of a virus is not uncommon. This mutation is part of the spike protein that the novel coronavirus uses to enter host cells. “We are sure that the vaccine being developed will cover this strain also,” he said.
The strain with the D614G mutation, dubbed the ‘G clade’, became widely prevalent in India even as far back as April, asserted
Kumar Somasundaram, professor of Microbiology and Cell Biology at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore.
In June, Somasundaram’s team published a study in the journal Current Science, analysing hundreds of samples of the virus in India. “Back in April, if 100
patient samples were analysed in India, 40-50 per cent of them had the G clade virus. If you look at those analysed in June, almost 95 per cent are G clade… cumulatively if you add up all the samples that have been analysed over the months, the G clade makes up 70-75 per cent of the cases in India,” he explained.