What Is Potential Impact of India’s “Double Mutant” Variant on Rhode Island

What Is Potential Impact of India’s “Double Mutant” Variant on Rhode Island

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As Coronavirus cases continue to explode in India, there are growing concerns about the potential impact of an emerging variant dubbed the “double mutant.”

Globally, there are now more new cases in the past two weeks than the number of cases in the first six months.

India has turned into a Covid killing field — more than 120 in India are dying per hour.

Leading Indian journalist and Washington Post columnist Barkha Dutt appeared on a zoom conference sponsored by Brown University's School of Public Health and described the carnage in India.

"We are in a period of calamity, of mourning, of emergency, of collective grief, of helplessness. We are a nation on tenterhooks," said Dutt. "We are a nation with a hollowed-out heart and if anyone is going to tell us today to be positive I will personally pick up something and throw it at them because I think that's just a callous stone death remark to make because this is just the beginning.

Dutt is an award-winning TV reporter, anchor and columnist with more than two decades of reporting experience. She is India’s only Emmy-nominated journalist. She made the remarks on April 26 and cases have since risen in India.

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Three questions are emerging about the “double mutant” variant: how transmissible is this variant, how lethal is it, and are the leading vaccines effective against it.

The Times of Israel reports, “A top health official on Wednesday said it was not clear that COVID-19 vaccines offer protection against the so-called Indian variant of the disease, and cited this concern as a key reason why Israel must ban travel to countries with high coronavirus infection rates.”

“We don’t know about the Indian variant, we don’t know enough,” Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health services at the Health Ministry, said of the strain of the disease ravaging India. Asked about claims and indications that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective against the Indian strain, she said: “I didn’t see any research on this.”

But Pfizer scientists believe its vaccine is effective.

CNBC reports that BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said last Thursday he is “confident” the company’s Covid-19 vaccine with U.S. partner Pfizer is effective against a coronavirus variant first identified in India.

The strain, known as B.1.617, contains two key mutations that have been found separately in other coronavirus variants. The variant also referred to as the “double mutant,” was first spotted in India, where it’s thought by some to be behind a recent surge in new Covid-19 cases there.

 

Dr. Fine Says Not Enough Is Known

Former RI Director of Health Dr. Michael Fine said on GoLocal on Tuesday that there are concerns, but much more needs to be learned.

“There are many different mutations on this type of RNA...and each of those different mutations can change the behavior of the virus. I think what they're seeing in India is a couple of different changes similar to some of the changes we've seen. It always makes us worry that a particular strain, a variant strain will be particularly transmissible or particularly lethal,” said Fine.

“The problem is the studies about transmissibility and lethality by a couple of weeks or months, the description of these mutations...we don't know for sure how this will impact us. In the lab it looks like it may have some significant impact around transmissibility,” added Fine.

“We don't know yet about lethality and we just don't know what the impact will be,” said Fine.

Fine said the United States was too slow in closing travel from India to the United States. "We can guarantee the variant is now in the United States," said Fine.