Current affairs

India becomes the first country to successfully isolate and culture the new COVID-19 variant!

By alagu, 03 January, 2021
India, COVID-19, COVID-19 mutant, United Kingdom

In a crucial breakthrough, India has become the first country in the world to successfully isolate and culture the new COVID-19 variant and the development has significantly set a drive towards responding and mitigating the new strain of the Coronavirus, which had originated and emerged in the United Kingdom late last year. 

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has on Saturday put out the news and said that India has successfully isolated and cultured the COVID-19 variant. India is reportedly the first country to isolate and culture the new strain and it was carried out at the National Institute of Virology in Pune and the development has come after India has reported dozens of cases tested positive for the variant. 

The ICMR has released the official statement through Twitter in which it had said, "India successfully cultures the new viral strain on the horizon (UK-Variant of Sars-Cov-2). UK-Variant of the virus, with all signature changes, is now successfully isolated and cultured at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) from the clinical specimens collected from the UK-returnees". 

By asserting that no country has yet reported successful isolation and culture of the UK-variant, the ICMR has stated that Vero cell lines were used by the scientists of ICMR-NIV to culture the UK-variant of the virus. As India successfully isolates, it has been expected that the development would pour light on how the new strain is emerging and how it needs to be responded to along with the COVID-19 viral infection. 

Being the epicenter of the new variant, the British government had recently announced that the newly identified variant of COVID-19 found in the country is up to 70% more transmissible. The British government had re-imposed the lockdown to contain the spread by admitting that the spread is out of control. Following the emergence, several countries began initiating preventive and countermeasures to curb the spread of the new variant.  

India has deployed precautionary measures to tackle the spread and the government has initially suspended flight operations to and from the UK and made the RT-PCR test mandatory for all the UK returnees. On December 21, the Union Aviation Ministry has issued the order to suspend flights to and from the UK from December 23 to December 31st and the ban was earlier extended till January 7 to contain the spread of the variant at the initial stage. 

The government said that around 33,000 passengers had arrived at various Indian airports from the UK from November 25 to December 22. The government had advised all the state and UT governments to trace the passengers and it had made the RT-PCR test mandatory for the passengers, co-travelers, and family members. According to the Union Health Ministry, India has reported 29 cases tested positive for the new COVID-19 variant so far as of Friday and they have been kept in the isolation at their respective states. 

The samples connected to the UK-returnees have been getting tested in the labs in Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. However, on Saturday, the Union Aviation Ministry said that it has decided to resume the flight operations between India and the UK. The ministry has said that flights from India to the UK will be resumed from January 6 while flights from the UK to India will be permitted from January 8. 

Union Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said 30 flights will be allowed to operate every week, 15 each by the Indian and the UK carriers. Puri stated that this schedule is valid till January 23 and further frequency will be determined after a review. The Aviation Ministry has restricted 15 flights per week each for carriers of the two countries to and from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

According to reports, the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, Australia, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon, and Singapore. It must be noted that 'Culture' is the process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside their natural environment. 

 

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