India successfully cultures UK-variant of Sars-CoV-2: ICMR

India has successfully isolated and cultured the UK-variant of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Saturday.

India has successfully isolated and cultured the UK-variant of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Saturday. It is to mention that no other country has yet reported successful isolation and culture of the UK-variant of SARS-CoV-2, the ICMR informed.

"SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, was being tracked through a countrywide network of ICMR-laboratories since the early days of the epidemic in India. UK-variant of the virus, with all signature changes, is now successfully isolated and cultured at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) from the clinical specimens collected from UK-returnees," it stated in a tweet. ICMR said that the vero cell lines were used by the scientists of ICMR-NIV to culture the UK-variant of the virus.

A more transmissible strain of COVID-19 is reported to have caused a spike in infections in the United Kingdom. As per the experts, this strain is more transmissible than other SARS-CoV-2 variants (ANI)