COVID-19 in India: Are biological and environmental factors helping to stem the incidence and severity?

Sankha Shubhra Chakrabarti, Upinder Kaur, Anindita Banerjee, Upasana Ganguly, Tuhina Banerjee, Sarama Saha, Gaurav Parashar, Suvarna Prasad, Suddhachitta Chakrabarti, Amit Mittal, Bimal Kumar Agrawal, Ravindra Kumar Rawal, Robert Chunhua Zhao, Indrajeet Singh Gambhir, Rahul Khanna, Ashok K. Shetty, Kunlin Jin, Sasanka Chakrabarti

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

The ongoing Corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic has witnessed global political responses of unimaginable proportions. Many nations have implemented lockdowns that involve mandating citizens not to leave their residences for non-essential work. The Indian government has taken appropriate and commendable steps to curtail the community spread of COVID-19. While this may be extremely beneficial, this perspective discusses the other reasons why COVID-19 may have a lesser impact on India. We analyze the current pattern of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, testing, and mortality in India with an emphasis on the importance of mortality as a marker of the clinical relevance of COVID-19 disease. We also analyze the environmental and biological factors which may lessen the impact of COVID-19 in India. The importance of cross-immunity, innate immune responses, ACE polymorphism, and viral genetic mutations are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)480-488
Number of pages9
JournalAging and Disease
Volume11
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Keywords

  • ACE2
  • COVID-19
  • Cross-immunity
  • India
  • Mortality
  • Transmission

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