India's first report on the genome of SARS-CoV-2 indicates that the lockdown imposed by the government between March and May has worked.
The source of a variant of the novel coronavirus that has become the most prominent in India has been attributed mostly to Europe, said the country’s first report on the genome of SARS-CoV-2.
Amid the surging COVID-19 cases, the revelation has been seen as a hope that it may be easier to deal with a more “homogenous’’ entity than those with different lineages, according to The Indian Express' report.
The Department of Biotechnology presented the report before Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on August 1.
The report stated that the A2a haplotype has rooted out any other haplotypes that existed before. A haplotype is a group of genes, which is inherited together by an organism from a single parent, said the report.
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As per the initial results, multiple lineages of SARS-CoV-2 are circulating in India that are probably introduced by travel from Europe, the USA and East Asia, the report stated.
“The findings show that the predominant haplotype strain in India has come from the cluster in Europe, and the entry of this lineage happened through travellers from Europe and Saudi Arabia” the study revealed.
It further said that in the earlier months from January, there were cases of 19A and 19B, the original Wuhan strain, which indicated that these were through travel from China. But these cases were less and the A2a haplotype strain took over entirely, said Dr Arindam Mitra, one of the study’s lead scientists from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) in Kalyani, West Bengal
Now, it exists in all areas of the country and is the most prominent strain, Mitra was quoted as saying.
The study further suggested that haplotype diversions peaked between March and May, before the A2a haplotype emerged as predominant by June. This means the lockdown imposed by the government between March and May has worked, said Mitra.
Also, the findings said that the D164G gene variant, a global characteristic of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, is on the decline in Delhi, which may have possibly resulted in a “decline in transmission” in the capital, said the report.
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