Karnataka Detects A Case Of Eta Variant Of Covid, Here's What We Know About The New Strain

Karnataka has confirmed the case of the Eta variant of Covid in the state while reports suggest this is not the first case.

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Bengaluru: After Delta, delta plus variants, India has reported a new strain of Coronavirus in Karnataka. A case of Eta strain of Covid-19 was found in Mangaluru in South Karnataka.

Mangauluru District Health Officer said the strain was found in the RT-PCR samples of a passenger travelling from Dubai four months ago and the case was confirmed on Thursday, according to a report by TOI.

This is not the first case of Eta variant in the state, the Times of India quoted Dr V Ravi, state nodal officer and chairman of Committee for Covid-19 Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). He said that the first case of the Eta variant was reported in April 2020 when the variant was detected in two samples at Nimhans’ virology lab through genomic sequencing in April 2020 and belonged to patients from Mangaluru.

What do we know about Eta Variant so far?

• As of March 5, the Eta variant had been detected in 23 countries. The first cases were detected in December 2020 in the UK and Nigeria, and as of 15 February, it had occurred in the highest frequency in Nigeria, as reported by WHO
• The World Health Organisation has classified each emerging variant as either a Variant of Concern (VOC) or a Variant of Interest (VOI). On March 17, 2021, Eta has been designated as a variant of interest.
• Eta being called as the variant of concern mean means the strain has been “identified to cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside an increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health."
• Eta differs from all other variants by having both the E484K-mutation and a new F888L mutation (a substitution of phenylalanine (F) with leucine (L) in the S2 domain of the spike protein). 
• As of 24 February, 56 cases were found in the UK. Denmark, which sequences all its Covid-19 cases, found 113 cases of this variant from 14 January to 21 February, of which seven were directly related to foreign travel to Nigeria.
• The Eta variant does not carry the same N501Y mutation found in Alpha, Beta and Gamma, but carries the same E484K-mutation as found in the Gamma, Zeta, and Beta variants.
• As of July 2021, UK experts are studying it to ascertain how much of a risk it could be. It is currently regarded as a "variant under investigation", but pending further study, it may become a "variant of concern".
  
  With alert over the third wave across the country, finding a new covid mutant is a matter of serious concern, especially in the southern states which are already experiencing an upsurge in Covid cases.