CHENNAI: The new strain of Covid-19, which is suspected to be 70 per cent more transmissible than the current one, may not have much impact on those who have already been exposed to the current strain, say experts.
Thes state, which was starting to lower its guard after bringing down the cases considerably, tightened measures when the new strain originated in the United Kingdom, and a passenger who landed in Chennai from the country tested positive.
While the UK has entered into a second lockdown, people here also fear of the new strain possibly causing reinfections. The civic body officials too got on their toes to identify every single flier who had come from the UK in the past month and keep tabs on their health status.
While the virulence of the new strain could be stronger than the original one, public health experts say that the antibodies present in those who have already had an exposure to Covid-19, may keep any such sort of infection away. Virologist Jacob John says this new variant of the virus has a slight modification in its infectiousness.
“Mutations of a virus may vary in degree of infectiousness but the antigenic properties of the virus would not change much. Thus, the immune response of those with pre-exposure could extend protection against this also,” he observes.
While more than two lakh people have been infected so far, the Chennai Corporation has tested close to 30 lakh people, which is close to 40 per cent of the city’s population.
Apart from this, the civic body has also screened a total of 41.37 lakh people in its fever camps, which is more than 50 per cent of the population. With such drives and rigorous control measures in place, experts think the new strain, irrespective of its virulence, may not lead to another lockdown or a large-scale spread in the society.
“A human body has antibody-based and cell-mediated immunity, which keeps the viral characteristics in its memory. The body will respond to the virus in a better way irrespective of its mutations,” tells Dr K Kolandasamy, former director of Public Health.
While reinfections have been a rare phenomenon so far, experts are also unsure on how efficient a vaccination would be in the context of mutation.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr Subramanian Swaminathan of Gleneagles Global Health City, says science is on the side of the vaccine, which must be a good match for the new strains also, but it is also better to be cautious.