Increasing efforts towards faster mass vaccination and virus surveillance is the key to ward off dangers posed by a triple-mutant coronavirus now present in the country, health experts said on Wednesday. The B1617 variant, first detected in Maharashtra, contains mutations from two separate virus variants -- E484Q and L452R. The third mutation evolved from the double mutation where three different Covid strains combined to form a new variant.

Two of these triple-mutant varieties have been found in samples collected from Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh. The RNA virus has the potential to acquire mutations as it replicates and spreads. These mutations can, sometimes, result in virus variants with better adaptability to its environment.