Scientists identify second most common coronavirus type in India-THE HINDU-03-06-2020

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Evolutionary similarities:

“Epidemiological assessments suggest that the common ancestor emerged in the month of February 2020 and possibly resulted in an outbreak followed by countrywide spread,” say the scientists from the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in their paper that’s not yet peer-reviewed but available on the bioRxiv pre-print server for scientific criticism.

While we rely on samples from the State authorities, it appears that this originated from a person in Telangana who had travelled from Indonesia, Singapore or some place in South-East Asia,” Rakesh Mishra, Director, CSIR-CCMB, and one of the authors of the study, told The Hindu.

The A2i type, once it took root, became the dominant clade in Telangana and also Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Delhi, three States that are among those that, as of Tuesday, collectively account for a little over 1,00,000 cases. India now has close to 1,90,000 confirmed infections.