The new strain of the coronavirus that has caused the UK to go into one of the most stringent lockdowns since the pandemic broke out in March, is that enemy. The highly contagious variant of COVID-19, which experts believe is 70 per cent more transmissible, has led to several countries issuing travel bans on the UK, including India, and nations in the EU. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has attributed a spike in new infections in London to this mutated strain, which is now the dominant variant.

UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser has pegged 60 per cent of infections in London to this strain by December.

Even as India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan reassured citizens that there was no need to panic, it was reported that a passenger who had arrived in Chennai on Tuesday from London, had tested positive for COVID, and that his samples had been sent to Pune to check if he carried the mutated COVID strain. A similar scene played out in four other cities in India, where as many as 19 passengers who arrived this week tested positive for COVID. These developments have been a cause for anxiety for people across the city. The state government had recently embarked on a gradual unlocking, which was once again tightened because of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, for which guidelines have been issued prohibiting public gatherings on the beaches or roads. The discovery of the new strain could lead to further backtracking.

We must understand the adversary we are dealing with. Reports suggest the faster transmission rate of the mutant virus is by no means, a basis for assuming the strain is more dangerous than what we have been dealing with for a year now. Epidemiologists believe mutations are a common phenomenon and that even six months ago, a new variant of COVID-19 had been in circulation. This latest mutation has already spread to South Africa, and parts of mainland Europe, as per virologists’ reports from Berlin.

A fear lingering among the public is whether the recently developed vaccines will be able to fight the new mutated strain. Other apprehensions are regarding whether the mutation carries deadlier risks than that of the current virus. As per Trevor Bedford, a biologist and genetics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, the healthcare community is concerned about viruses mutating by changing the proteins on the surface to help them hoodwink the drugs or even the immune system.

The researcher recently tweeted that they have witnessed the emergence and spread of many variants that show resistance to antibody treatments.

The new variant is said to have two dozen mutations, some of which are on the spiky protein which the virus uses to attach to and infect cells. And the current COVID vaccines target that spike. There is an upshot to the situation. Experts currently agree the new mutation will not make the vaccines ineffective. The reason is it takes more than a few mutations and that too, for a few years, to undermine the effectiveness of a vaccine. Several changes to the virus’s genetic code will be needed for it to bypass the body’s inbuilt defences. Encouragingly, the tech used in both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is easier to adjust or update compared to conventional vaccines. And they also pack a wallop when triggering the body’s immune response.

It is worth recalling the example of the influenza viruses, which mutate rapidly. As a result, during every flu season, vaccines are readjusted to remain effective. Experts haven’t done away with that idea for COVID as well – essentially, an annual COVID shot could be what the doctor ordered.