OMICRON CASES
and had returned from Tanzania a few days ago,” according to an official quoted anonymously by news agency PTI. According to the official, the patient’s travel history was being collated, and contacts being traced.
Lok Nayak hospital is the designated centre for isolation of those suspected to have been infected with Omicron in the Capital.
Later in the day, seven people were found infected with the Omicron variant in Pune district. The samples of six people tested positive for the variant in Pimpri-chinchwad (on the outskirts of Pune city) and one in Pune.
The Pimpri-chinchwad cluster included a 44-year-old Nigerian national of Indian origin, her two daughters, her brother, and his two daughters, officials said. The infection in Pune was reported in a 47-year-old-man who travelled to Finland last month.
The nine people who tested positive for the variant in Jaipur included four members of a family who recently returned from South Africa, while the remaining five were their acquaintances, state officials said.
Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said on Saturday that the third wave of Covid-19 infections could be of the Omicron variant in Maharashtra if precautions were not taken. He added that the new strain was mild and didn’t cause severe disease that required mass hospitalisation.
To be sure, neither of those characteristics are confirmed and scientists are carrying out studies to establish whether the variant is more transmissible, resistant or virulent.
Much remains unknown about Omicron, which was first identified in South Africa on November 8.
It was subsequently labelled as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on November 26.
Dozens of countries have imposed travel restrictions on southern African nations since it was discovered.
The variant has already gained a foothold in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Many governments rushed to tighten travel rules to keep the variant out.
According to the India’s genome testing consortium, INSACOG, the omicron variant is characterised by 30 amino acid (building blocks of proteins) changes – of these 15 are in the receptor binding domain that connects with the human cells to enter inside and three small deletions and one small insertion in the spike protein.
Experts have stressed that more time is needed to determine if cases of this variant progress to the severe stage, or if vaccines would need to be reworked to combat it. They say that aggressive screening is a good way to keep the numbers low.
“How many people will be infected, and how many will need hospitalisation and how many will succumb to the infection will depend on the nature and status of individual immunity (natural infection-related/ vaccine-related/hybrid) and how much we as a community will adhere to the Covid protocols. Even if the percentage of affected people or complications might be low; with increased transmission - the absolute numbers could be overwhelming,” said Dr Anup R Warrier, head, Infectious Diseases and Infection Control, Aster DM Healthcare’s India Units.