Ginger Fingers

Home » 2021 » May » 05

Daily Archives: May 5, 2021

N440K: New Variant of Covid-19 is More Infectious and Lethal than Others

May 5, 2021 2:08 AM / Leave a comment

Source: WHO website

India is witnessing a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic covid-19. Since its emergence as a pneumonia-like outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 has spread widely to become a global pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 in India was reported on 30 January 2020 and since then it has affected more than 20 million people and resulted in around 222,408 deaths till May 3, 2021 in the country as per WHO dashboard. This pandemic has proved to the most unpredictable due to the quick spread new variant of coronavirus. The infection and its trajectory is still evolving across the globe. India is currently experiencing a massive covid-19 surge. Double mutant strain has been detected in at least five Indian states which is designated as  the Indian variant B.1.617. Other variants such as B.1.1.7 (United Kingdom), B.1.351 (South Africa), P.1 (Brazil) are also circulating India.

Recently, scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad has reported a new variant of Covid-19 named it as N440K which is ten times more infectious than earlier virus in India. About fifty percent samples collected from various centres  from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and some parts of Maharashtra are found to have the variant  N440K spreading in the region. The variant N440K generates 10 times a greater number of particles compared to the previous one. About fifty percent samples collected from various centres from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and some parts of Maharashtra are found to have the variant N440K spreading in the region. The variant N440K generates 10 times more number of particles compared to the previous one and is the major cause of widespread corona infection in these areas. For example, Telangana witnessed about 100 per cent surge of the Covid cases starting from 6159 in the beginning of April to 80,000 cases in the number of active cases.