Indian doctors revealed a new version of Coronavirus in West Bengal, an employee of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology Wine Skary, RIA Novosti reported.
Located in the East of the state of West Bengal borders with five states of India, as well as with Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. According to the Ministry of Health of India, in the past day in the state, 9,819 new victims of Coronavirus were revealed, total treatment from COVID is over 58.3 thousand people.
B.1.618 is a new SARS-COV-2 line, preferably detected in India and characterized by a separate set of genetic options, including E484K, the main option of evasion from the immune response, “said Skary in Twitter.
This is the second coronavirus line, which was detected from India, the first was B.1.617, also known as a variant of coronavirus with double mutation.
E484K mutation in protein-spike is common to “South African”, “Brazilian” and “Bangladesh” strains. With this mutation in protein, glutamic acid is replaced with lysine in amino acid position 484, which, according to a number of experts, can reduce the effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies in virus neutralization.
“The initial sequences in line B.1.618 were found in the Indian state of West Bengal. Members of this line are also found in other parts of the world, but do not have a complete set of options, as in India,” said Skary.