India has banned all flights from the UK from Monday fearing that the new Covid strain that has affected parts of that country might be carried by passengers from there. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced another lockdown termed as “stay at home,” in London and Southeast England to combat the spread of the new strain. This has put paid to peoples’ hopes of celebrating Christmas with lesser restrictions.
Other countries that have also temporarily banned flights from the UK include Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium and Switzerland. Medical experts have, however, said that there is as yet no evidence to indicate that the mutation causes a more severe form of Covid19 or is resistant to any of the existing vaccine candidates. Considering that viruses regularly mutate, the SARS-Cov-2 (Covid) has also appeared in several countries. The new strain was discovered by the genomic surveillance of England’s Public Health authorities. This was brought to the attention of the UK Government on December 18 and this was immediately communicated to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In India the process of opening up had begun even while the lockdown since March 24 this year had created its own sets of problems and has had a devastating effect on industries and livelihoods. To have the current strain of Covid restricting movement of people, pushing many to work from home, closing schools, colleges and universities yet again would be disastrous. It is imperative that the health care system is ramped up and testing improved so that any sign of the variant in India is immediately controlled. The new variant has appeared independently in the UK and South Africa, and experts say this is not unusual as viruses undergo numerous mutations.
That this new variant should appear at a time when a vaccine for the old one is yet to be fully available is indeed unfortunate. But according to Dr Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser for the US government’s vaccine distribution effort, the possibility that the new variants will be resistant to existing vaccine candidates is low, but not “inexistent.” Other researchers also claim that the mutations may not be resistant to existing vaccine candidates and will still protect against them. Unlike influenza viruses, the coronavirus evolves and mutates at a much slower rate.
However as more people get vaccinated, researchers expect the virus to evolve mutations that will help make it resistant to vaccines in the future. So the problem continues to baffle the world of science and medicine. Everything today is tentative and the economy does not seem to stand a chance against the virus.
