Russia is not at risk from the Indian strain
The current covid outbreak in India cannot be attributed to coronavirus mutation alone.
Pavel Volchkov, head of the MIPT genomic engineering laboratory, told Izvestia this, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It is still unclear to me how exactly India got such a spread of infection recently. I cannot explain this only by a mutation of the virus, even if it has greatly increased its contagiousness (infectiousness). Any virus has a limit beyond which increasing its “stickiness” is no longer beneficial for the pathogen itself. After all, if it is extremely effective, that is, it quickly infects and kills its host, then it will stop being transmitted. Therefore, I can rather explain such a large number of infected people in India, for example, by a sharp increase in testing or the cancellation of some anti-epidemic measures,” the scientist said.
According to him, even if the Indian strain is finally brought to Russia, it is unlikely that it will be possible to see such a peak in incidence as in the homeland of the new variant of the virus, since many people have already been ill and have developed immunity.
In turn, the director of the Scientific and Clinical Center for Precision and Regenerative Medicine of KFU, Albert Rizvanov, notes that the new strain is more contagious.
“However, there is currently no evidence that this variant causes more serious disease,” says the specialist.
“As for the effectiveness of vaccines against new strains, preliminary data shows that all existing vaccines are effective against them. Moreover, researchers usually look at the production of antibodies, and this is just one aspect of vaccination,” Rizvanov added.
Much more important, he emphasized, is cellular immunity, which is sensitive to different parts of the virus's spike protein that are not affected by mutations that may not be recognized by neutralizing antibodies. And this mechanism, the expert says, can provide complete protection, including against new strains.
Russia is not threatened by the Indian strain.