There was a dramatic drop-off in India but it was a false-dawn.

BBC: A new double mutant variant of the coronavirus and 771 others have been detected in samples collected from 18 states across India.

Of the 10,787 samples, 736 were positive for the UK variant, 34 for the South African variant and one for the Brazilian variant.

(T)he government said there was no link between the spike in cases and these variants.

The big question is - do the vaccines work against variants? If they do - great. If they don't then it's Groundhog day.

By the middle of last week, India was barely counting an average of 10,000 Covid cases every day. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from the disease slid to below 100. More than half of India's states were not reporting any Covid deaths. On Tuesday, Delhi, once an infection hotspot, did not record a single Covid death, for the first time in 10 months.

It's not due to the vaccine, which was only rolled out recently and in insignificant numbers to have had an impact.

It's too early to know if this could become a world-wide trend but it's worth watching. Would be great for the vax makers - they could claim it was all because of their drugs.