“Those therapies which are being touted as ‘anti-viral’ or ‘anti-COVID therapies’ and that they have don’t have benefits established during a research project paper, those therapies shouldn’t be used as they’re going to put tremendous immune pressure on the virus and it’ll tend to mutate more, Dr Bhargava told ANI.
Speaking within the context of UK Covid-19 virus strain mutation, Dr Bhargava said genetic mutations occur within the respiratory viruses but higher transmissibility may be a point of concern.
“Genetic mutations occur within the respiratory viruses and these minor drifts may occur from time to time but once several drifts occur it’s higher transmissibility rate because it happened within the uk . in order that may be a point of concern although we are testing in India for virus variants regularly.”
He said immune pressure on the virus could also be associated with the environment and is more associated with the treatment, or other modalities which cause this immune pressure on the virus.
“So it’s important for our scientific community also that we don’t put an excessive amount of immune pressure on the virus and that we need to maintain the judicious use of therapies which are getting to benefit. If the benefit isn’t established, we should always not use those therapies. Otherwise, they’re going to put tremendous immune pressure on the virus and it’ll tend to mutate more,” he said, noting that well-established therapies should be used.
He said the experts are going to be watching data.
“The vaccines that are the front-runners are targeting the S- protein and also targeting the M- RNA but we discover that they’re going to still be effective. we’ve to be very careful to seem for any immunity breakthrough which will happen by vaccination,” he said.