There isn’t enough scientific evidence yet to indicate that SARS-CoV-2 or the Novel Coronavirus has a separate Indian strain and the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) was working with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to better understand the virus, Director of the Bangalore-based NCBS Satyajit Mayor has said.
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, he said: “There is reasonable evidence that this could be a zoonotic intrusion, the implications being that this has occurred because of random mutation where humans are more prone to get infected. I don’t think we know yet that this is a different strain from what we have seen in other countries like China, the U.S. and Italy.”
The NCBS was studying information on the sequences the ICMR had released. “Viruses mutate quickly, and there is a lot of research we can do here [on the strain in Indian]. You can’t bottle up a virus like this and so, while we can’t yet say this has spread in the communi