Double Mutant: India’s battle against the new Covid variant

From the Covid samples collected lately from India, A new variant is getting detected. It’s called the ‘double mutant strain. The infamous variant is impacting the fight against the virus in India. At least 18 states across India have traced the new virus strain, apart from India this strain has affected other countries like the UK, Brazil, and South Africa.

Is the new variant dangerous?

India is facing a surge in covid cases and the caseload has reached 1,28,01,785 with 8,43,473 active cases with Maharashtra detecting 55,000 cases, UP and Delhi detected about 5,000 cases. The new variant can be impacting the numbers but we still don’t know a lot about the new strain. The new strain is 70 times more hazardous than its older version. The second wave is proving to be more menacing than the first one in India as well. The mutant strain can be better at infecting people, even escaping anti-bodies thus causing reinfection in recovered patients too. But the chances of reinfection are lower than chances of primary infection on people who are new to the virus. If the new virus has mutated in certain ways it can also penetrate through herd immunity and infect a large proportion, but we still lack data on the new variant. The new strain requires more study to be claimed more hazardous or menacing. As the number of cases affected by the new variant or any other different variant is not enough to support the theory that the new strain is affecting the sudden rise in cases.

New strain imposing new symptoms?

Classic Covid symptoms include cough, fever, body pain, loss of taste, impaired sense of smell, etc. We barely know anything about the new double mutant or any other variant of the virus. So it makes sense that the virus must’ve evolved itself to be more efficient in attacking our bodies. Studies have proven that fever is observed as a prominent symptom as compared to the infections from the previous rendition of the virus. Although fever detected in some cases from the older strain, it wasn’t as prominent. However, as new variants surfaced, fever is a severe major symptom. The new variants can affect us in many impactful ways. Rarely seen symptoms like hearing loss, muscle pain, skin diseases, etc can be more prominent in recent variants.

We need to be more precautious!

SARS-COV-2 itself is a very infectious virus, and from observing the caseload and previous studies conducted on the virus. Speculations suggest that the new strains might impose more dangers on us. Imagine any new strain as an advanced version of covid, thus making them more contagious and risky for us. Whether the double mutant is affecting the rise in cases or not, is yet to be researched. But the fight against the pandemic is not over yet. The new strains are prone to reinfect people who have already been affected before. Even the people who are getting vaccinated are still getting tested positive for Covid-19. This could be because of mutations in the virus, after so many experiments, phases, trials, and tests the vaccines can’t be trusted against the new variations of the virus. The bottom line is to stay safe and take all the necessary precautions to keep yourself and your family safe from this pandemic.