NEW DELHI – A new and potentially troublesome variant of the coronavirus has been detected in India, as have variants first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, health officials said Wednesday.
Health Ministry officials and experts, however, cautioned against linking the variants with an ongoing surge in new infections in India.
Cases in India had been plummeting since September and life was returning to normal. But cases began spiking last month and more than 47,000 new infections were detected in the past 24 hours, along with 275 deaths — the highest one-day death toll in more than four months.
The virus has been mutating throughout the pandemic. Most mutations are trivial, but scientists have been investigating which