India’s COVID-19 death toll crossed the 200,000-mark on Wednesday with the country struggling to contain a deadly second wave, feared to be caused due to the outbreak of the mutated B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus. 

On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the variant has now been found in over 17 countries. First found in India, the so called ‘double mutant’ or the ‘Indian strain’ virus has been found in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID database “from at least 17 countries”, the WHO said in its weekly update.

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“Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA and Singapore,” it added. 

Featuring a number of mutations and different charatacteristics, the B.1.617 was recently termed as a “variant of interest” by the WHO.

But it has not termed it as a “variant of concern” so far, which would indicate it is more dangerous than the original coronavirus in terms of transmissibility, kill rate and increased resistance against vaccines. 

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However, the health agency said that the variant has a “higher growth rate than other circulating variants in India, suggesting potential increased transmissibility”. 

The virus has been largely found in Delhi and Maharashtra, which have been the two worst-affected states in the second wave.

In a number of Maharashtra cities, the variant was found in over 50% samples on which genome sequencing was conducted, in contrast with the UK virus’ 28%. 

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Neither the UK nor the B.1.617 variants have been known to cause increased illness of fatalities. But while the UK variant is proven to have a higher tranmissibility, with the ‘India strain’, there is only skepticism so far, Anurag Agrawal, the Director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), told PTI.

The B.1.617 variant has three new spike protein mutations, two of which, E484Q and L452R, are in the area important for antibody-based neutralisation. The third mutation, P681R, makes it easier for the virus to enter cells.