New Delhi : India has detected the first case of Omicron sub-version BA.4 in Hyderabad. However, the sample has been sent to the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG) for re-examination. An official announcement is yet to be made from INSACOG, a person familiar with the matter confirmed on Thursday.
“An African national had come to India for some business meeting and was found COVID positive at Hyderabad airport. His samples were sequenced and found to be BA.4. The information came last night and as a precaution, Insacog is verifying the sample again. However, the patient left for his country on 16.5.2022, as he was asymptomatic. Contacts have been listed and people who came in contact with them are being traced,” said a person with knowledge of the matter.
Emailed questions to health ministry spokespersons were not immediately answered until the story was published.
Last week, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control noted in a statement that there is an increasing trend in the variance ratio for BA.5 seen in Portugal, as well as an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and test positivity rates . ECDC has asked countries to be alert for signs of BA.4 and BA.5 emerging.
The ECDC stated that there is no indication of any change in severity for BA.4/BA.5 compared to the previous Omicron lineage.
On Wednesday, Dr Rajesh S Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in the Union Ministry of Science and Technology, told Mint that INSACOG is tracking the data and co-correlating the data in terms of disease severity.
“Omicron virus is very unstable virus, it has 15 mutations, whereas in Delta we didn’t see very many mutations. Omicron continues to evolve and what we are seeing is sub-lineage of Omicron. BA.4 and BA. .5 Coming from the same lineage, but we are already safe, however, we must not lose our defenders. In most of the European countries we are seeing a surge in BA.4 and BA.5 as they have used Omicron in the past The wave has not been seen. “It is a highly permeable variant,” said Raman Gangakhedkar, senior scientist and former head of epidemiology at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).