Significant mutation in virus: Hamdard study

New Delhi: The novel coronavirus causing Covid-19 in India has undergone significant genetic changes or mutation, a study conducted by researchers from Jamia Hamdard in collaboration with Hyderabad-based Envirozyme Biotech And BioInception Labs in Cambridge (UK) has revealed.

The study is based on an analysis of nearly 4,000 genomic sequences of the novel coronavirus - SARS-CoV-2 - available in public databases. This includes 25 genomes of the virus sequenced in India.

Professor Seyed E Hasnain, the vice-chancellor of Jamia Hamdard, said that they found that some protein in the Indian strain had diverged from the Wuhan strain – the implications of which are yet to be known fully. “It could affect the infectivity of the virus, both positively and negatively,” the Jamia Hamdard VC said.

He added that the mutations seen in the strains of the virus will also impact the efficacy in India of any vaccine developed abroad. The initial strains of SARS-CoV-2 in India came from China, but the travel ban in early February 2020 prevented large scale spillover directly from China to the Indian subcontinent.

However, the Jamia Hamdard VC said, due to unrestricted travel from other Asian regions, those strains still appear to have been transmitted indirectly from China, as they fall in the same cluster. The strains sequenced in India have the highest degree of similarity with European strains, he added.

Hasnain said more such studies are required to understand the pathogen’s outbreak dynamics. “Low sampling rate and a smaller number of genome submissions are major bottlenecks in the assessment of the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in India. We hope that the government will work to increase the sampling rate. Rapid and diverse sequencing of viral strains will help researchers find better diagnostic probes leading to higher sensitivity and specificity, improved drug efficacy and broad-spectrum vaccines,” he said.