A new variant of the Covid-19 virus was found out in three different states of India called the Delta Plus variant. The union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday’s briefing stated that sixteen of these cases have already been reported in the Ratnagiri and Jalgaon districts of Maharashtra. Bhushan also said that Delta Plus remains a ‘variant of interest’ and has not yet become a ‘variant of concern’. The Delta Plus variant was found in more than nine countries at present: United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Switzerland, Japan, Poland, Nepal, China and Russia. The Delta variant is a ‘variant of concern’ and the variant has spread across 80 countries.
The health ministry had advised Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh governments to take immediate steps to stop the spread of the virus by using containment measures, enhanced testing, promoting vaccination drives in districts and tracking of clusters where the new variant was found. They are asked to send the samples of patients who are affected by the new variant to the laboratories of INSACOG so that the clinical epidemiological correlations can be made, Bhushan said. The new findings of INSACOG were that the new variant was mainly found in genome sequenced samples from Ratnagiri and Jalgaon districts of Maharashtra, Palakkad and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala, and in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal and Shivpuri districts. Sequencing of a total of 45000 samples was carried out till today. INSACOG is a group of 28 laboratories of ministry of health & family welfare, department of biotechnology, Indian Council of Medical Research, and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for whole-genome sequencing in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. INSACOG has provided the states and union territories with appropriate public health response measures, apart from genome sequencing.
As per the reports of INSACOG, the Delta Plus variant is currently a ‘variant of concern’, which means that it has many features like increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells and can cause a potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response. This variant can also show resistance towards the existing treatment protocol for Covid-19. The main concern is that, will the vaccine have any effect on the Delta Plus variant. The government said that Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin are the two vaccines that are used by India and they proved to be effective against the Delta Plus variant, data’s on how they work will be shared soon by the government.
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