A new strain of the coronavirus is reigning in India, and hospitals are on alert and mandatory face masks have been reinstated.
However, top scientists do not expect it to be more deadly than other types currently circulating, which cause a much milder illness that closely resembles the flu.
Officials believe it is single-handedly driving the latest wave in India, with the number of cases rising as much as 13-fold within a month, reports N1.
The country's national health ministry this Sunday conducted mock exercises to test how prepared hospitals are for another potential influx of patients.
India's health ministry said there were 12 active cases on April 40.215, an increase of 3.122 in just one day.
These cases of patients included those who are positive and receiving treatment at home, as well as those who are in the hospital.
Separate data from the Oxford University-run Our World in Data platform showed that the number of new daily cases reached 3.108 on April 4, up from 242 one month earlier.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently monitoring the new strain, which was first discovered in late January, and officials say it has some mutations that are causing concern.
Marijaa Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead for the coronavirus, said that the new strain has been in circulation for several months.
"We didn't see a change in the severity of the disease in individuals or in the population, but that's why we have these systems. It has one additional mutation in the spike protein that shows increased infectivity in laboratory studies, as well as potentially increased pathogenicity," she explains.
Van Kerkhov added that while KSBB.1.16 has been discovered in other countries, most of the sequences are from India, where it replaced other variants.
She also said that so far there have been no reported changes in disease severity in KSBB.1.16 infections, the Daily Mail reports.
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