India's struggle to track new Covid-19 variants could worsen the crisis
The good
news is that the vaccines work against a new virus strain circulating in India
that’s spread to several other countries.
The bad
news is it won’t be only the new version of the pathogen to emerge from an
outbreak of this scale, underscoring the urgency of mapping other possible
variants that may be currently racing through India’s tightly-packed population
of 1.4 billion people.
As infections
surge by more than 300,000 cases for 14 straight days, pushing India’s tally
past 20 million, the country’s limited ability to track new mutations emerging
from its outbreak is a growing concern for scientists.
Second-
or even third-generation versions of the variant known as B.1.617 could already
be circulating in India and some may be more dangerous, said William Haseltine,
a former Harvard Medical School professor who now chairs think tank Access
Health International. Read More
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