2 New Omicron Variants detected in Maharashtra
WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
Maharashtra has detected four infections caused by the BA.4 sub-strain of Omicron coronavirus variant, and three cases of BA.5 sub-strain, reported news agency PTI, quoting an official fromthe state health department, on Saturday.
All the patients had mild symptoms of Covid-19 and were treatedsuccessfully in home isolation, according to the official.
“The whole genome sequencing was conducted by theInstitute of Science Education and Research, and its finding has been confirmed by the Indian Biological Data Centre in Faridabad.
As many as seven patients, all from Pune, were detected with the infection of the sub-lineage of Omicron," the official said.
WHAT’S THEIR AGE?
“Four patients have the infection of B.A. 4 variant whileothers have contracted the B.A. 5. Four of them are men and three women.
Four patients are above 50 years of age while two are in 20-40 age group while one patient is a nine-year-old child," he added.
WERE THEY VACCINATED?
All six adults have been vaccinated with both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine while one has taken the booster shot too.
The child is unvaccinated.
Their samples were taken between 4 and 18 May.Two of them had travelled to South Africa and Belgium, while three had travelled to Kerala and Karnataka. The other two patients had no recent travel history.
ALREADY DETECTED IN INDIA
This comes days after the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) confirmed the presence of the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub-variants in India.
In a statement issued last week, said a 19-year-old woman in Tamil Nadu had been found infected with the BA.4 sub-variant of the virus. The patient showed only mild clinical symptoms and was fully vaccinated. She had no travel history.
Meanwhile, experts have also said that these newly-detected sub-lineages will not cause a surge in infections but people still need to be vigilant.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) last week designated the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants as variants of concern (VOC) and said, They could fuel increases in infections, with a 12% to 13% growth advantage over the Omicron’s BA.2 sub-lineage.
BA.4 and BA.5 were first detected in South Africa.
The BA.4 variant was first detected from a specimen collected on January 10, 2022 in Limpopo, South Africa, and BA.5 was
first detected on February 25, in KwaZulu-Natal.
Experts said high transmissibility should not worry as much as higher hospitalisation rates and deaths.
“The concern is high hospitalisation and death rate for any new variants; However in the Omicron wave we have seen fewer hospitalisations and deaths, which seems to tell us that was some protection against severe disease at the population level likely because of the hybrid immunity due to vaccination and natural infection.”
CONCLUSION
Among other major variants that are currently in circulation as per the whole genome sequencing of samples, delta and kappa have higher presence, with about 1.5% and 0.5% of the samples returning positive for the respective strains, the Insacog data showed.
Q. Saprolegniasis is a disease in fish caused by?
A) Bacteria
B) Virus
C) Fungi
D) Protozoa
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