Presently very infectious B.1.617 (double mutant) and B.1 are major variants in prevalence, says Health Department.
Andhra Pradesh Health, Medical and Family Welfare Department stated that the novel coronavirus variant B.1.36 (N440K) was found way back in June-July last year in the State along with Karnataka and Telangana. It was prevalent between December 2020 and February 2021, dropped drastically in March and was very minimal now as per the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), said the Health Department in a release on Thursday.
“In April two major strains – B.1.617 (double mutant) and B.1 – were identified in the positive samples collected from A.P., Karnataka and Telangana.
“They are very infectious and were also spreading in the younger age groups apart from the adults,” it stated.
The Department informed that on average 250 positive samples were being sent to CCMB for genome sequencing every month from the laboratories in A.P.
Further, it was…