(Dan Tri) – Scientists have pointed out a flaw that India may encounter in its efforts to fight the `nightmare` Covid-19.
Indian people vaccinated against Covid-19 (Photo: Reuters).
In recent days, India is experiencing a second serious outbreak, with over 300,000 Covid-19 cases per day recorded for 14 consecutive days.
The good news for India is that the Covid-19 vaccines being administered in India are working effectively against dangerous, contagious variants.
However, the bad news is that they are not the only mutations and this will make the epidemic situation predicted to continue to be complicated in the near future.
Expert William Haseltine, head of the organization `Global Health Access` (USA), said the second or even third generation of the B.1.617 variant may be spreading in India and some other countries.
`India currently has the ability to sequence the genome, but the country needs to have a mass surveillance program (for SARS-CoV-2 variants),` Mr. Haseltine said.
According to experts, the speed of emergence of many new dangerous mutations is tending to surpass the speed of vaccination in many parts of the world.
The epidemic in India is still complicated (Photo: Reuters).
The second outbreak in India is considered to be related to the B.1.617 variant, a virus that possesses a double mutation in the spike protein that helps the pathogen enter human cells.
Scientists also point out that vaccines being vaccinated in India such as Covaxin or Covidshield are effective in preventing the above virus strain.
However, experts also note the importance of `viral genome monitoring`, emphasizing that this technique can help India predict and detect early if other dangerous mutations appear.
Laboratories in India currently lack equipment to effectively monitor the mutation of viruses.
Forecasting models
While India is struggling with the serious development of the epidemic, some researchers are using models to make predictions about India’s epidemic situation.
A research team at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore used a mathematical model to predict that India could record 404,000 deaths by June 11 if current epidemic trends continue.
Meanwhile, a model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington (USA) predicts that if the situation becomes serious, India could record more than 1 million deaths from
WHO said yesterday that in the past week, India accounted for 46% of the total number of new Covid-19 cases globally and 25% of people who died from the epidemic in the world.