Anannya Roy, Amity University Kolkata
Last month the city of Kolkata had reported a double mutant type B.1.617 strain of COVID19. Today, an indigenous triple mutant variety B.1.618 is identified. This strain, dubbed as the “Bengal strain” by Scientists, is much more infective compared to the previous ones and what is terrifying them more is that it has the capacity to escape a patient’s immune surveillance. People who were infected by the virus previously and even those who are vaccinated are no exceptions. Anyone, in all age groups, can be infected.
One of the researchers working in CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), states on Twitter that in recent months the proportion of B.1.618 has been growing rapidly, along with the previous strain, it forms a major lineage in West Bengal. The Institute is a part of Indian SARS-Cov-2 Genomic Consortia (abbreviated as INSACOG) that had been initially set up to monitor if Indians were getting foreign variants of the virus from travelers. Coincidently, the double mutants E484Q and L452R were identified from samples in Maharashtra during this time.
All viral genomes collected from the eastern part of the country are sequenced in the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani. Here, the Bengal strain was first sequenced from a patient on 25th October 2020 and by January it proliferated to large amounts. Statistical data shows that the double mutated B.1.617 caused 28% of all cases, closely followed by the UK variant, B.1.1.7.
Scientists are worried about the fact that the triple mutated variant carries the same mutation (E484K) that was found in the Brazilian and South African Variants. This is an immune escape variant, which means that the previous antibodies that were produced in the body while fighting with a non-mutant virus would be less effective against it. This would also include the antibodies raised by the vaccines. In conclusion, even people who have been previously infected by Coronavirus or those who have been vaccinated are not safe.
According to Chinnaswamy, B.1.618 has four signature mutations that make it distinct from the previous double mutant. It also has the D614G mutation that was the first variant identified from the virus that originated in Wuhan, China. The new variant has deletions in the spike protein whose actual significance is still unknown because this part does not interact with the human ACE2 receptor.
Besides West Bengal, this Bengal Variant is also found in the US, Singapore, Switzerland, and Finland. According to Dipyaman Ganguly, an Immunologist from CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, these mutations are what make a virus more successful in infections.
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