The newly detected variant of Coronavirus has created mayhem all around the globe. India entered the list of countries with the new strain of the virus, making it the 30th country with the perilous virus. It has triggered a sense of alarm globally.
Two Covid-19 cases of Omicron variant have been detected in Karnataka, as reported by the Health ministry. Both the cases are from Karnataka and both the patients are men. One of the patients is 66 years of age and the other patient is 46 years old. Both the patients are showing mild symptoms and are kept under medical supervision. The identities of the patients haven’t been disclosed keeping in mind the concerns over their privacy as told by Health Ministry’s Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal at a news conference.
The patient who is 66 years old is a foreigner with a travel history to South Africa. He came to India from South Africa via Dubai and was fully vaccinated. The other patient has no travel history and works as a health worker in Bengaluru. All the primary and secondary contacts of both the patients have been traced and are being tested. As told by the Bengaluru civic body, three primary and two secondary contacts of the 46-year-old patient tested positive between November 22 and 25. Their samples have been sent for genome sequencing and the results are anticipated.
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The studies have claimed the new strain of virus to be more contagious because of its mutated genomic structure than all other previous strains of Coronavirus however it is still to be discovered if the strain is more deadly than all the previous strains.
Balram Bhargava, Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research, mentioned that both the cases were detected in Karnataka through genome sequencing efforts of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) of 37 laboratories that are established by the Ministry of Health. He also mentioned that there is no need to panic as the situation is under control. Although, he emphasized taking all the Covid-19 precautions and to avoid social gatherings.
After going through a record jump in deaths and infection in the second wave that hit India in April- May, the cases were seen to be dropping and the normal life was starting to come on the track after almost two years of this battle. Precautions and collective efforts can only prove to be beneficial in the fight between men versus viruses.
Many countries have implied various restrictions on international flights. India was all ready to restart the scheduled commercial flights on December 15 but now have changed the plan, new resumption dates are yet to be announced.
The officials during the news briefing talked about the vaccine uptake being the need of the hour. They requested the people not to delay in getting fully vaccinated. 84.3% of the adult inhabitants in India got the first dose, while the percentage is 49% for the second dose.
Maharashtra and Kerala reported over 10,000 Covid cases while nine states and union territories showed 1000, 10,000 active cases.
“There are two parts to the virus to worry about- infectivity & virulence. The R0 factor maybe 12-18 times or even higher. It means it could be a very devastating spread. Right now, we don’t know the exact details of it. There’s nothing to suggest it’s going to be okay and nothing to suggest it’s going to be devastating. All we know is that we’re in a very tricky situation as they found this new variant which has 30 plus variants on the spike protein and over 50 variants in the whole structure.”, Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman-MD, Medanta, The Medicity said.
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