India's ministry of health announced Wednesday officials have discovered a new variant of the COVID-19 virus with two mutations as well as hundreds other infections caused by other known variants of concern first found in Britain, South Africa and Brazil.
"Though VOCs and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish or direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states," the ministry said in a statement. "Genomic sequencing and epidemiological studies are continuing to further analyse the situation."
The double mutant variant was discovered in samples from western Maharashtra state, it said, explaining the mutations "confer immune escape and increased infectivity."
These mutations have been found in between 15-20% of samples and do not match any previously cataloged variants of concern, it said.
The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics discovered the variant as it has been conducting genomic sequencing and analysis of COVID-19 samples since it was founded on Dec. 25.
Since then, it has discovered 771 variants of concern from among fewer than 11,000 samples shared by states.