As the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths in India continue to mount, public health officials are carefully watching yet another looming threat: the appearance of mutations that could be making the virus circulating there more infectious or more capable of causing severe disease.

Scientists believe that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for this second wave of cases in India already include at least two mutations that make them more dangerous. These mutations are already familiar to COVID-19 experts. One is found in a variant first identified in South Africa, while the other is part of a variant believed to have emerged from California. Researchers believe that these two mutations may, respectively, make it easier for the virus to infect human cells, and to evade the protec…