Indian COVID-19 variant detected by Reditus Laboratories

Posted on May 19, 2021
The labs CEO Dr. Aaron Rossi says his goal in sharing the latest sequencing information is simply to keep the public aware of the spreading variants. (Facebook/Reditus Laboratories)

By Neil Doyle

PEKIN – A Pekin laboratory has detected the Indian double mutant COVID-19 variant in a test sample from Bloomington-Normal.

According to a news release, Reditus Laboratories detected the variant while testing 371 randomly selected positive COVID-19 samples. The variant, first identified in India, was first confirmed in the United States on April 3.

Reditus says the variant is of concern because it carries 13 mutations and preliminary evidence indicates that they are potentially more contagious than previous strains of the virus.

The labs CEO Dr. Aaron Rossi says his goal in sharing the latest sequencing information is simply to keep the public aware of the spreading variants.

“We’re just alerting the public on what we’ve seen in our latest sequencing runs,” said Rossi.

Neil Doyle can be reached at [email protected]

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