Indian strain of coronavirus almost ousted British from USA

The Indian variant of the new coronavirus - or delta variant - is called the B.1.617 strain. Generation line

B.1.617 is a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Characteristic mutations are L452R, P681R and E484Q. It contains several nested lineages (including B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3), which differ slightly in characteristic mutations. It was first noticed in India at the end of November 2020. A few months later, by the spring of 2021, the virus quickly spread throughout the world. The delta variant differs from other variants of SARS-CoV-2 by a set of several previously unidentified mutations. Scientists suggest that they are responsible for the special contagiousness of the virus. In addition, it is mutations that make it resistant to the action of antibodies.

American epidemiologists have studied in detail howThe Indian strain is spreading across the United States. The authors of the work, published on the preprint website medRxiv, studied more than 20,000 coronavirus samples. They were collected in different US states from the beginning of April to June 15, 2021.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that to date, the Indian strain has almost ousted the British from the United States. The next step is the Brazilian strain, which is inferior to the delta variant in terms of propagation rate

“Proportion of infections with the British variant of coronavirusamong new infections in just six weeks fell from the 70% mark in April this year to 42%. It is being replaced by Indian and Brazilian variations of SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, the first is spreading throughout the USA much faster than the second,” the researchers write.

The researchers also noted significant differences in the rate at which new SARS-CoV-2 variants spread across states with high and low vaccination rates.

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