As per a recent molecular study of the Indian variant B.1.617 can modestly evade the neutralising antibodies produced after vaccination.
But its two mutations do not have an additive impact on loss of sensitivity. The study was conducted by Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortia in collaboration with researchers from UK.
The double mutant comprises E484Q and L452R. Though this is a yet-to-be peer-reviewed article which was uploaded on biorxiv.
It shows that immune evasion of the double mutant variant is less than variants with E484K that caused ten-fold reduction in neutralisation as compared to the variant that was in circulation last year.
There are infections reported in vaccinated individuals but all vaccines protect against severe disease,” says Dr Anurag Agarwal, who is one of the authors of the paper and director of Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB).
The researchers also found that the variant was more transmissible in laboratory setting.
These experiments were conducted using a pseudovirus with the key mutations of the Sars-CoV-2 and sera from people who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
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