‘Variant tracking an essential part of long-term strategy’: Satyajit Rath

Satyajit Rath was trained as a physician and a pathologist and has worked on mechanisms involved in the development and functioning of the immune system, in India and overseas, and later as a faculty member at the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi. There is quite good evidence for SARS-CoV-2 virus that such ‘neutralising’ antibodies do protect better than non-neutralising ones. ‘THE INDIAN VARIANT’ The government took offence to one of the variants being described as an “Indian” variant by sections of the media. That said, ‘I am shocked, shocked, I tell you’, when I see the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India using these very geographical nomenclatures it objects so strongly to for SARS-CoV-2 virus variants: On January 12, 2021, ‘ Total number of persons found positive with UK variant strain of COVID is 96 ’; and on March 24, 2021, ‘ These include 736 samples positive for viruses of the UK lineage. It is also to do with a lack of trust and enthusiasm amongst Indian ‘experts’ from very different domains in order to work efficiently and productively in well-formed collaborations on large scale.