Genome sequencing of Aligarh Muslim University’s Covid-19 samples has not detected a new virus. Genome sequencing of Covid-19 samples has not found a new coronavirus strain behind the infection around the AMU campus, university authorities said on Sunday when another member of their brotherhood died.
Professor Abu Qamar, 75, former dean of the medical faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, died on Sunday from Covid-19 after fighting it for nearly three weeks, JNMC director Shahid Ali Siddiqui said.
Prof. Qamar died two days after the death of the former proctor of the AMU, Prof. Nasim Beg (76), in a hospital in New Delhi, to which he was transferred and admitted after his condition had deteriorated there.
The number of AMU professors died during the Covid-19 outbreak
At least 38 AMU teachers, including 17 staff members, have died from Covid or Covid-like symptoms in the past 1 month, raising doubts as to whether a new deadly strain of virus was floating around the AMU campus.
These doubts also prompted the university’s JNMC authorities to send Covid-19 samples from the AMU campus and the adjacent Civil Lines area to the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi for genome sequencing.
No new strain of coronavirus was detected in samples sent to the CSIR in New Delhi for genome sequencing, a senior JNMC official said in an effort to relieve the hospital’s beleaguered staff after many deaths at the incumbent and retired AMU Employees had stood on the edge.
Where does the double mutation variant of Covid-19 come from?
Prof. Haris Manzoor Khan, director of the JNMC’s microbiology division and principal researcher at the AMU’s Virus Research and Diagnostics Laboratory, said of the 20 samples sent to CSIR for genome sequencing, 18 (90 percent) had B.1.617. 2 Lineage, known as the double mutant variant, first identified in Maharashtra on October 5, 2020.
It is a subtype of the B.1.617 variant that is the main virus circulating in Uttar Pradesh in the second wave of COVID-19, he added.
The WHO has described it as a “variant of concern” due to its higher transferability and reduced neutralization by pre-existing antibodies.
B.1.617 shows a higher growth rate than other circulating variants, which indicates a possible increased transmission rate.
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(With PTI inputs)
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