India’s Double Mutant Arrives in Nevada

Posted on by Thor

Seven cases of India’s Double Mutant have been identified in Nevada. This mutant has been contributing to the devastating surge of COVID-19 in India.

Residents with cases of the variant “did not appear to have traveled,” said Heather Kerwin, epidemiology program manager for the Washoe County Health District. This indicates that there is community spread.

Mutations make the COVID Virus better able to evade the body’s immune defenses produced through immunization or prior infection. Early evidence indicates that vaccines still protect against it, though the level of protection might be somewhat lower, Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. said.

Based on a CDC recommendation, the U.S. announced April 30, 2021 that starting May 4, 2021 it will restrict travel from India because of the sharp increases in cases and deaths there.

Since the mutations have already arrived, this is clearly too little too late. As long as residents vaccinate they could stop this virulent mutation from spreading. The variant has also been found in Michigan which is experiencing a huge spike in COVID Cases in recent weeks.

The variant has been identified in at least 17 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

COVID-19 Double Mutant

Posted on by Thor

A new COVID-19 variant known as “Double Mutant” is responsible for a surge in coronavirus cases in a a region of India that includes Mumbai. The existence of the newly discovered variant was first disclosed by India’s government on March 24, 2021. It is called a double mutant because it contains two mutations of the COVID-19 virus.

One day late, on March 25, 2021 one case of the Double Mutant was found in the San Francisco Bay area in California.

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, a Stanford doctor, said, that this double mutation has a mutation in the spike protein which is found in the California variant and also a mutation that is found in the South African and Brazil variants.  “We do have some information on experiments on the individual mutations (California, Brazil, South African) suggesting that antibodies will be less able to neutralize this India variant.” Pinsky said. “So this rapid spread across the globe is pretty impressive, and also a bit concerning.”

The city of Manaus in Brazil was one of the hardest hit in the world with a conventional strain of the coronavirus, and it now there’s a lot of substantial reinfection with the new Brazilian variant, Dr. Stefano Bertozzi, professor of health policy and dean emeritus of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said at a UC San Francisco forum last month.

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky said, “Vaccines may be slightly less effective in preventing moderate disease or moderate illness with this particular variant, but the vaccines are still very effective and people should get vaccinated as soon as possible.” “We don’t know how those two mutations behave when they’re paired together.”

The emergence of the new variant underscores how important it will be to quickly vaccinate as many people as possible. The only way to stop the proliferation of mutations is to stop the spread of the virus through vaccines. If you are vaccinated, the immunity produced is believed to be better than immunity produced by surviving COVID-19. If you are vaccinated an get infected by one of these new variants then the result wold be a mild to moderate illness, likely not ressulting in hospitalization or death.