Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Dec 28: Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) today said that people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection could be re-infected with the new mutated strain.
DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan in a statement issued here said that those who have got COVID-19 could get sick again with the new variant.
“A new mutated COVID strain has surfaced in the United Kingdom and is spreading to other countries; the new variant has multiple mutations in the spike protein of the virus and the most troubling is deletion mutation which makes it spread more easily,” he said.
Quoting a new study published in the preprint server bioRxiv, Dr Nisar said that antibodies elicited by natural COVID-19 infection may not be able to neutralize emerging strains that display deletion mutations in their genetic sequence.
“Researchers from South Korea found that a young woman infected with one strain of Covid-19 was, just weeks after recovering, reinfected with a different strain of the virus,” he said.
Dr Nisar said the mutation in the new variant has resulted in an altered protein product which could evade the immune response elicited by an earlier strain of the same virus.
He said that the new strain could lead to a resurgence of Covid-19 cases that could reignite the pandemic.
He said that the mutated variant is the dominant strain in the UK and is responsible for more than 60 per cent of Covid-19 cases.
“Kashmir being the favourite tourist destination, the mutants can come to us anytime. We have to be prepared and alert – we need to gear up our hospitals to prevent an outbreak,” he said.
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