Tag Archives: new coronavirus variant

India says new COVID variant is a concern

By Uday Sampath Kumar and Bhargav Acharya

BENGALURU (Reuters) -India on Tuesday declared a new coronavirus variant to be of concern, and said nearly two dozen cases had been detected in three states.

The variant, identified locally as “Delta plus,” was found in 16 cases in the state of Maharashtra, Federal Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told a news conference.

The ministry said Delta plus showed increased transmissibility and advised states to increase testing.

On Monday, India vaccinated a record 8.6 million people as it began offering free shots to all adults, but experts doubted it could maintain that pace.

“This is clearly not sustainable,” Chandrakant Lahariya, an expert in public policy and health systems, told Reuters.

“With such one-day drives, many states have consumed most of their current vaccine stocks, which will affect the vaccination in days to follow.”

With the currently projected vaccine supply for the next few months, the maximum daily achievable rate is 4 to 5 million doses, Lahariya added.

The effort has so far covered about 5.5% of the 950 million people eligible, even though India is the world’s largest vaccine producer.

A devastating second wave during April and May overwhelmed health services, killing hundreds of thousands. Images of funeral pyres blazing in car parks raised questions over the chaotic vaccine rollout.

Since May, vaccinations have averaged fewer than 3 million doses a day, far less than the 10 million health officials say are crucial to protect the millions vulnerable to new surges.

VACCINE DRIVE FALTERING

Particularly in the countryside, where two-thirds of a population of 1.4 billion lives and the healthcare system is often overstretched, the drive has faltered, experts say.

Maintaining the pace will prove challenging when it comes to injecting younger people in such areas, Delhi-based epidemiologist Rajib Dasgupta said.

The capital is also facing difficulties. Authorities in New Delhi said more than 8 million residents had yet to receive a first dose and inoculating all adults there would take more than a year at the current pace.

India has been administering AstraZeneca’s vaccine, made locally by the Serum Institute of India, and a homegrown shot named Covaxin made by Bharat Biotech.

Last week, Serum Institute had said it planned to increase monthly production to around 100 million doses from July. Bharat now estimates it will make 23 million doses a month.

On Tuesday, television channel CNBC-TV18 reported that phase-3 data for Covaxin showed an efficacy of 77.8%.

India may also soon have a mass rollout of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, and the government expects to import vaccines this year from major makers such as Pfizer.

Although new infections in India have dropped to their lowest in more than three months, experts say vaccinations should be stepped up because of the transmissibility of new variants.

Over the past 24 hours India reported 42,640 new infections, the lowest since March 23, and 1,167 deaths.

Infections now stand at 29.98 million, with a death toll of 389,302, health ministry data showed.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath Kumar and Bhargav Acharya, Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru, Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Pune; Writing by Neha Arora; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Angus MacSwan and Giles Elgood)

France investigates new coronavirus variant detected in Brittany

PARIS (Reuters) – Scientists are investigating a new coronavirus variant that has been detected in Brittany in western France and may evade testing more successfully than other versions, the regional health authority said on Tuesday.

Eight cases of the new variant were identified in a cluster in a Brittany hospital. France’s health ministry said late on Monday that early analysis did not suggest the mutation was more contagious or more deadly than earlier versions of the virus.

“Investigations will take place to determine how this variant reacts to vaccination and to antibodies developed during prior COVID infections,” Brittany’s regional health authority said in a statement.

Scientists also want to understand if the variant can hide from testing after several of the patients delivered negative PCR tests and returned a positive result only from samples taken from blood or deep in the respiratory system.

Polymerase Chain Reaction tests are used to directly detect the presence of an antigen, rather than the presence of the body’s immune response, or antibodies.

International agencies have been alerted to the discovery of the new variant.

Brittany has so far avoided the brunt of the third wave of infections sweeping through France and other European countries, but the incidence rate is rising.

The seven-day moving average of infections per 100,000 inhabitants in Brittany stood at 132.9 on March 12 compared with 113 a week earlier. The incidence rate in Paris and its surrounds, where intensive care wards are near saturation, stands at 404 per 100,000.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Tom Hogue and Timothy Heritage)