Sentinel sequencing of 324 COVID-19 positive samples reveals presence of all Omicron variants in the community: Health Ministry

The government’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP) sentinel sites sent 324 COVID19 positive samples for sequencing to 22 INSACOG laboratories. The samples were collected between December 29 and January 7 from various sentinel locations such as hospitals.

“Sentinel sequencing of these positive samples taken from the community revealed the presence of all omicron variants like BA.2 and its sublineage including BA.2.75, XBB (37), BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 (5), etc. . the government said in the release.

However, no mortality or increase in transmission was reported in areas where these variants were detected.

Besides this, the Union Health Ministry has started random testing of international passengers arriving at various airports from December 24 last year.

“Since then, 13,57,243 international passengers arrived in India on 7786 flights at various airports, out of which 29,113 randomly selected passengers were tested by RT-PCR. A total of 183 samples tested positive were subsequently sent for whole genome sequencing to 13 INSACOG laboratories.”

“Sequencing of 50 samples revealed omicron and omicron sub-lineages including recombinant variants. XBB (11), BQ.1.1 (12) and BF7.4.1 (1) were the main variants detected in these samples of international travelers,” the government statement said, adding that the Union Health Ministry is closely monitoring the Covid- 19 Status in various states through IDSP network especially on transmission and hospitalization trends.