Bangladesh on Saturday reported the presence of the Indian Covid variant in six persons in the border district of Jashore.
Scientists, however, asked people to maintain as usual health and hygiene rules such as wearing masks, washing hands and maintaining physical distance, instead of being panicked.
"So far, we don't have any evidence to suggest that this variant is more deadly. So we need to maintain basic health and hygiene rules and take vaccines. Vaccines also work against this variant," Dr. ASM Alamgir, principal scientific officer of the government's disease monitoring agency, IEDCR, told Bangladesh Post.
Earlier, Professor Nasima Sultana, additional director general for health services, at a briefing said they found the virus in six persons in Jashore.
"They are now in isolation. They returned from neighbouring India recently," she said, adding that they had tested samples of eight people who had entered Bangladesh through Benapole and found six of them positive for the Indian double-variant - B1617.
Bangladesh earlier closed the border with India with a provision to allow citizens to come back taking special permission.
The Indian double mutant has spread to 'at least 17 countries', the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, as of April 27.
India saw a record 4,187 fatalities due to Covid-19 in a single day, taking the country's death toll to 2,38,270, while 4,01,078 new infections were reported in a day, pushing the tally to 2,18,92,676, according to the Union health ministry data updated on Saturday.
Registering a steady increase, the active cases have increased to 37,23,446, comprising 17.01 per cent of the total infections, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has dropped to 81.90 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed, according to Times of India.
Scientists say viruses mutate all the time, as part of evolutionary biology. Some mutations weaken the virus while others may make it stronger, causing more infections.
Dr. Sujeet Singh, director of the Indian National Centre for Disease Control, said the surge in cases seen over the last one and a half month in some states shows a “correlation with the rise in (presence) B.1.617," but stressed the surge is not “fully established”.
“However, its epidemiological and clinical correlation is not fully established… without the correlation, we cannot establish direct linkage to any surge," Dr Singh told Indian media.
Bangladesh on Saturday reported 1,285 new cases while the coronavirus claimed overnight 45 lives.
The tally of infections has surged to 772,127 and the death toll from the pandemic has risen to 11,878.
Bangladesh first recorded the cases on March 8 last year.
