WHO chief scientist Dr.Soumya Swaminanthan said that they have been tracing this COVID-19 virus from the beginning of the year and understood that it has undergone many changes and so variants obtained. WHO is concerned about the two variants of SARS COV-2 reported recently in U.K and in South Africa which has one common change called N501Y mutation( a concern) and otherwise these two are different. Since these variants are spreading at a rapid rate, it is a serious concern in both of these countries. It is also evident that scientists say these two variants do spread faster and more transmissible as well as more infectious than the previously reported ones which is a worrying part.

Till now these two variants do not seem to cause more severe illness, or higher death rate or any different clinical manifestation and are behaving as the previous viruses only causing similar kind of disease. According to the circulating strain the vaccine has to be modified as done in case of influenza virus by coordinating global networks by WHO.

SARS-COV-2 is still at the stage of learning and observing and knowledge on it is evolving but most scientists believe that the vaccines currently in development and few which are approved should provide protection against this variant and other variants as these vaccines give very broad immune response that is antibodies generation as well as cell mediated response so some changes in these viruses should not make these vaccines ineffective which will be confirmed shortly by the scientists.

If the given vaccines are not effective, then they can be changed very quickly now a days because of extensive research and the modifications can be done quite easily. The variants now and previously reported are behaving and spreading in the same way so we should stop its spreading because the more it goes into human hosts the more chance is there to form a variant which is a natural property of the virus.

So transmission or spreading of virus should be reduced by identifying the infected and making them isolated to prevent further spreading, wearing of masks, physical distancing as well as frequently cleaning hands, avoiding crowded places, avoiding closed places, staying home if you are sick. These may help in bringing down the transmission.