ICMR isolates strain of UK-variant COVID-19; says 'Índia first country to do so'

In a major breakthrough for India, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday, announced that its Pune-based lab - National Institute of virology (NIV) has successfully isolated and cultured the UK strain of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) from the UK arrivals. Stating that India was the first to isolate the strain of UK variant of COVID-19, ICMR said that vero cell lines were used by the ICMR scientists to culture the UK-variant of the virus. As of date, 29 people have tested positive for the new COVID-19 UK strain.

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What is the new UK variant?

The new strain first came to light in December in the United Kingdom but the samples in which it was found were collected in September.  This led to the UK government announcing a strict Tier 4 lockdown in some parts of the UK, with nine European countries soon reporting cases of the new strain. After the UK government came to know about the new strain on December 8, it informed the World Health Organisation (WHO) about the new variant - which has maintained that there is still no evidence of the pathogen behaving any differently from the existing types of virus. However, pharmaceutical companies have maintained that they expect their vaccines to work against all variants.

The new Coronavirus strain has already made its way to India, with the Union Civil aviation ministry extending the ban on flights from the UK till 6 January 2021, mandating testing of all returnees from UK from December 25 till date. While reports stated that the strain is said to be 70% more transmissible, Union Health Ministry has assured that the vaccines under development would also work against the variants detected in UK and South Africa. A consortium of 10 government labs across the country has been established for genome sequencing, with the Centre recommending all states to do 5% genome sequencing of all samples in their labs.

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Covishield & Covaxin receive SEC nod

On January 1, Serum Institute of India's (SII) COVID-19 vaccine candidate - Covishield - was recommended by the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for emergency-use authorisation - making it the first vaccine to receive the green signal. A similar nod was given to  Bharat Biotech Pvt. Ltd (BBL)'s vaccine - Covaxin, while Zydus Cadila has gotten a nod to begin Phase-3 trials. Both vaccines now await DCGI's nod, while Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan announced that free COVID-19 vaccines will be provided to the most prioritised beneficiaries in the first phase of the inoculation drive.

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