India has confirmed the presence of a new coronavirus variant, exactly one year after it announced its first lockdown. The government says it is unclear if this strain is behind a sudden surge in cases.
India recorded more COVID-19 cases and deaths in one day this week than it has in the last five months.
The health ministry has confirmed that there is a new ‘double mutant’ strain of the virus in the country.
A genome sequencing study of 10 000 samples found that this variant, along with other strains from the UK, South Africa, and Brazil, has been detected in 18 states.
SABC’s Correspondent Neha Poonia reports:
The government says this mutation in the virus does not match previously catalogued variants. Specifically, in the state of Maharashtra, which is the country’s worst-hit region, mutations were found in 15-20% of all the samples.
The government has said that such strains usually signify that the virus has become more infectious but it claims it isn’t alarmed just yet. Authorities say they have not detected numbers large enough that they can attribute the sudden surge in cases to the India variant of the coronavirus.
The government says states must continue to test, treat and track cases and that a nationwide lockdown will not be imposed again.
Last year, on this very day, India was placed under what was possibly the strictest and largest lockdown anywhere in the world.
A year on, India is now the world’s third worst-hit country after the United States and Brazil.
However, the government says had that lockdown not been imposed, the country would have seen millions of deaths and many more cases.
New infections
On Wednesday, India reported 47 262 new infections over the previous 24-hour period, the highest since early November, taking its overall tally to 11.7 million. Only the United States and Brazil have higher caseloads.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours rose to 275, the most this year, taking the total to 160 441, government data showed.
Several states announced a ban on large gatherings ahead of the Hindu festival of Holi this weekend.
The federal government also announced it was expanding its nationwide inoculation campaign to include everyone above the age of 45 years from April.
India places third worldwide in terms of total vaccinations, after the United States and China, but ranks much lower on a per capita basis, the website Our World in Data showed.-Additional reporting by Reuters
