Srinagar, Feb 20: With India reporting mutated strains of the novel Coronavirus, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Saturday said the new variants could lead to resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
\n\u201cNew variants could trigger a new wave of Covid-19 that could reignite the pandemic,\u201d said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.
\n\u201cAfter the UK variant, South African and Brazilian variants have found their way into India,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cAt least 4 people have tested positive for South African variant of the virus and one has tested positive for the Brazilian variant.\u201d
\n\u201cWhile we struggle to come to grips with the foreign strains, a \u201cnew Indian mutant strain\u201d has been found in Maharashtra which is seeing a spike in cases after a two month lull,\u201d DAK President said.
\n\u201cThe new variants are on the move and they can sneak into the valley anytime,\u201d he said adding Kashmir being the favorite tourist destination, the mutant strains could spread into the region through tourists.\u201d
\n\u201cThe variants seem to spread more easily and quickly than other variants which could lead to surge in new Covid-19 cases,\u201d Dr Nisar said.
\n\u201cPeople who have recovered from Covid-19 infection could be re-infected with the new mutated strains of the novel virus.\u201d
\nQuoting a study published in the preprint server bioRxiv, he said that antibodies elicited by natural Covid-19 infection may not be able to neutralize emerging strains that display mutations in their genetic sequence.
\n\u201cThe new strains have been found to evade the effectiveness of the existing vaccines that have been developed against the original strain of the novel virus,\u201d Dr Nisar said.
\n\u201cResearchers from Johannesburg have shown that Oxford vaccine had significantly reduced efficacy against the South African variant.\u201d
\n\u201cVaccine trials carried out by Janssen and Novavax too showed a significant drop in efficacy due to the variant,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe variants loom at a time when Covid-19 cases are declining and people are weary of precautions. People must realize that the downward trend could quickly reverse if new variants take hold.\u201d
\n\u201cThe fact of the matter is we are kind of in the dark. We don\u2019t know whether the variants have sneaked in as there is no rigorous genetic surveillance system for tracking the variants.
\nDetecting variants and knowing where and how widely they are spreading could be critical to preventing another deadly wave of Covid-19 like the one we saw earlier,\u201d said Dr Nisar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Srinagar, Feb 20: With India reporting mutated strains of the novel Coronavirus, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Saturday said the new variants could lead to resurgence of Covid-19 cases. \u201cNew variants could trigger a new wave of Covid-19 that could reignite the pandemic,\u201d said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan. \u201cAfter the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}