India’s 1st Corona images show it’s round with cobbled surface

NEW DELHI: India’s first images of the SARS-CoV2 under a microscope are in — it’s round like other coronaviruses, about 70 to 80 nanometre (a human hair is about 80,000 nanometre) and has a cobbled surface structure.
The findings have been published in the ‘Indian Journal of Medical Sciences’ based on a report by the National Institute of Virology in Pune, the nodal testing centre for Covid-19 in India.

The specimen for these images were taken from the throat swab of a woman in Kerala, India’s first confirmed Covid-19 case. “A total of seven negative stained virus particles having morphodiagnostic features of a coronavirus-like particle could be imaged in the fields scanned,” the paper has said. “One particular virus particle was very well preserved.”
Studying the structure is crucial to understanding the origin and, eventually, develop vaccines to counter it. In the long run, it also helps understand its evolutionary relationship with other viruses. In this sample, two structural features specific to the novel coronavirus were observed...