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The Indian Covid-19 Variant, Explained
There’s panic about a double-mutation variant of coronavirus spreading in India and beyond — but what does this variant actually mean?
Throughout the last month, the world has looked on in horror as India has racked up the world’s highest death tolls at any point in the pandemic during a devastating second wave. At the peak of the epidemic in India, new daily cases soared above 400,000, and over 4,000 Indians were — and still are — dying every day from coronavirus.
The rise in cases in March and April which led to this was fuelled by a new variant that had originated in India sometime in late November 2020, but that had not picked up much traction until February 2020. Then, a number of cases of the B.1.617.2 variant were detected across India, indicating that the variant had spread widely across the country, sowing the seeds for the deadly second wave.
The variant is of particular concern as it is a double-mutated strain of SARS-CoV-2. Now the dominant strain of the virus in India, it has begun to spread across the world, prompting panic in the those countries in which it is now gaining ground, such as the UK, US, and Canada.
It would be fair to say that this variant is the most concerning thus far.
