'No significant mutation of Coronavirus in India'

New Delhi: No significant or drastic mutation in strains of SARS-CoV-2 has been found in India till now, Union Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday during an interaction with his social media followers.

He also said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has been conducting large-scale sequencing of nationally representative strains collected over a few months and detailed results on mutations of the virus will be available in early October.

Replying to queries during the 'Sunday Samvad' platform, Vardhan further said enough oxygen is being produced in the country and the health ministry is closely monitoring the situation. He took the occasion to remind everyone that the ministry had dispatched oxygen concentrators to the rural parts of the country specifically to avert the logistic issues coming to light, a health ministry statement said.

On the recent saliva-based test for COVID-19, Vardhan noted that ICMR has validated a few tests, but no reliable test has been found and companies with tests approved by US-FDA have still not approached the Government of India.

The minister added that ICMR is actively exploring this test method and will inform as soon as reliable options are available, the statement said.

To a question regarding the Centre's achievement of engineering polio eradication in India, he reminded the audience that coronavirus is a novel pathogen and unlike polio, literature is absent on it.

India's handling of outbreaks in the past such as SARS, Ebola and Plague will play a major role in containing coronavirus, Vardhan said.

"The Union Minister assured another follower that no significant or drastic mutations have been found in strains of SARS-CoV-2 in India (available in GISAID, global database), till now," the statement said.

The ICMR has been conducting large-scale sequencing of nationally representative strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus collected over the past several months over different time-points and detailed results on mutations and evolution of the virus will be available in early October, Vardhan said.

Vardhan said 155 families of COVID Warriors have claimed relief under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package: Insurance Scheme for Health Workers Fighting COVID-19. These include 64 doctors, 32 auxiliary nurse midwives and multipurpose healthcare workers, 14 ASHA workers and 45 other frontline workers who lost their lives.

He also noted that it would take a substantive amount of time for developing herd immunity to be able to cover about 70 per cent of the population. Hence the focus of the government is primarily towards putting together a strategy that combines containment and hospital management, the minister said.

Being a doctor himself, Vardhan answered questions on the clinical management of COVID-19 in great detail dispelling myths surrounding the use of hydroxychloroquine and plasma therapy in treating coronavirus patients. He also explained to his audience how coronavirus becomes fatal for the elderly and those with comorbidity.

He also dispelled fears caused by the suspension of trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate, saying vaccine development is a complex process and trials have restarted only after an independent investigative expert committee permitted them to proceed.