State Govt Seeks Detailed Report On Indian Variant

Mumbai: State health minister Rajesh Tope on Saturday said that after learning that 50% of the Covid-19-positive samples from the state have the highly infectious Indian variant of SARS-CoV-2 called B.1.617, he had asked for a detailed report from the Centre on it. He said he had been told that it would be available only at the end of the research.

- Malathy Iyer, Sumitra Deb Roy & Bhavika Jain

The concern in the state — and the rest of the world, too, because the Indian variant has been isolated in multiple samples in the UK and the US — is the high transmissibility of the variant.

“As the new variant is said to be highly infectious, we sought a report and revised guidelines, if any, from the Centre,” Tope said. “The Centre said a detailed report would be made available only at the end of the research.”