The vaccines currently available in India have been found to work against the Delta-plus Covid variant, says a UK public health body report. While the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) has already responded to vaccines including Covishield, health experts were concerned about the Delta-plus (B.1.617.2.1) or AY.1. This variant does not respond to monoclonal antibodies cocktail.
According to the latest report of Public Health England (PHE), “Very preliminary results for live virus neutralisation of AY.1 (a lineage of Delta with K417N), with a small number of sera from vaccine recipients are reassuring.” The PHE had obtained the vaccine data from the Genotype-to-Phenotype National Virology Consortium. Of the 161 genomes of Delta-plus uploaded on GISAID till June 22, eight are from India.
