Ministry of Health Denies Reports of Singapore COVID Variant in India

Singapore's Ministry of Health on Tuesday said there is "no truth whatsoever" to a claim from India that a deadly new COVID-19 variant has been detected on the island nation.

The statement came after Dehli's chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, called for a pause on flights from Singapore to India, claiming that the new strain is "extremely dangerous for children." Kejriwal added that the new variant could result in a third major coronavirus outbreak, at a time when India is already struggling to contain infections.

The claims were also reported in articles published by the Indian news outlets Hindustan Times and NDTV, according to CNA.

The Singapore Ministry of Health reacted strongly on Tuesday and said that "there is no 'Singapore variant.'" Instead, the country said the variant in question actually stemmed from India.

"The strain that is prevalent in many of the COVID-19 cases in recent weeks is the B16172 variant, which originated in India," it said. "Phylogenetic testing has shown this B16172 variant to be associated with several clusters in Singapore."

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan also tweeted in response to the claim, stating that "politicians should stick to facts."

According to CNA, two COVID-19 variants from India have been detected within imported and community cases in Singapore, causing a recent uptick in cases.

However, experts said it is very unlikely that a new strain of the virus originated in Singapore since there have not been long chains of transmission or major community outbreaks.

"It needs to be investigated through genome sequencing," Dr Chandrakanth Lahariya, epidemiologist in public policy and health systems in India, told the BBC. "But I doubt, the kind of transmission in Singapore, which is just a few cases, that is not enough to generate a new variant. The virus needs to multiply millions of times before it can become a new variant. It is unlikely to be a Singapore variant because new strains require sustained transmission."

On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar responded to the new variant claims by saying that Kejriwal did not speak "for India."

India has been struggling to contain a second major outbreak of COVID-19 infections for the past several months. On Wednesday, the country recorded 4,529 deaths in the past 24 hours, setting the world record for most COVID-19 fatalities in a single day.

Though experts have signaled that infection rates may be slowing, deaths have increased six-fold across India in the past month.

The devastating second wave has left hospitals overwhelmed and without adequate oxygen supplies. As deaths pile up, crematoriums have run out of wood to build funeral pyres and some cities have been forced to turn parks, parking lots and other public spaces into makeshift cremation sites. Some communities along the Ganges River have even begun dumping deceased bodies into the water.

By Wednesday, India had recorded a total of over 25.4 million cases and 283,248 deaths since the pandemic first began. Singapore has recorded 61,689 cases and 31 total deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Newsweek contacted Singapore's Ministry of Health for additional comment but did not hear back in time for publication.

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