New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair an important meeting, to be attended by top government officials, at 10.30 am on the COVID-19 and vaccination situation in the country.
The meeting comes amid rising global concern about the B.1.1.529 strain of the coronavirus, which has been red flagged by scientists over an alarmingly high number of mutations that might make the virus more resistant to vaccines, increase transmissibility and lead to more severe symptoms.
The B.1.1.529 variant – first detected in South Africa earlier this week, and since in Botswana, Hong Kong, Israel, and Belgium – has 50 mutation, including more than 30 on the spike protein and 10 on the receptor binding domain.
The spike protein is the target of most current COVID-19 vaccines and is what the virus uses to unlock access to our body’s cells. Researchers are still trying to confirm whether this makes it more transmissible or lethal than earlier variants.
The B.1.1.529 strain has been labelled a ‘variant of concern’ by the World Health Organization (WHO) has just renamed it Omicron. The ‘variant of concern’ tag puts it in the high-alert category, with the globally-dominant Delta, plus its weaker rivals Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
