Deadly virus variants inciting second surge, say experts

The second surge of Covid-19 cases in India has swamped hospitals much faster than the first because mutations in the virus mean each patient is infecting many more people than before, epidemiologists and doctors say.

“The point is that these variants of concern are still not on top of the discourse,” said epidemiologist Rajib Dasgupta of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“Even if it is a new variant, you need to do the same things” to control it and treat patients “but it requires a different urgency to recognise that”, he said. Doctors at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences have found that one patient is now infecting up to nine in 10 contacts, compared with up to four last year.

Scientists in Britain say the B.1.1.7 variant, widely known as the British mutant, is 70 per cent more transmissible than previous variants, and much deadlier. Punjab, which has reported one of the highest recent fatality rates in the country, said late last month 81 per cent of 401 Covid-19 samples it sent for genome sequencing were found to be the British variant.

“This virus is more infectious and virulent,” said Dhiren Gupta, a senior consultant at New Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

“More children are reporting high-grade fever compared to last year. We have 35-year olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which was not happening last year.”

India has recorded 14.1 million infections and 173,123 deaths in total. The government has mainly attributed the big rise in cases to a reluctance to wear marks and crowding. Still, it has refused to call off a mass gathering of Hindu devotees for a festival and its ministers are addressing tens of thousands of largely mask-less people in election rallies.

A scientist at the National Institute of Epidemiology said more evidence was needed to directly link

the rise in cases to the variants, but that anecdotally that seemed to be the case.

“There are in-vitro experiments which can also tell us about the infectivity, the severity, how lethal it is, etc, but those are not completed yet, they are ongoing,” said Tarun Bhatnagar.

“We haven’t had a virus that has spread so rapidly, and we haven’t had the time to study it. Everything is on the go. We are dealing with it, being affected by it and studying it. The pace of every thing is too fast.”

But with crowding still common in many regions of India, “we are about to find out just how dangerous this strain is”, said Om Srivastava, head of infectious diseases at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital who also advises India’s worst-hit Maharashtra state.

Meanwhile, in a new disturbing trend, doctors across the most-affected cities said they had seen an increase in the number of Covid-19 patients aged below 45 and suffering from more severe symptoms compared to last year.

“We are also seeing children under the ages of 12 and 15 being admitted with symptoms in the second wave. Last year there were practically no children presenting symptoms,” said Khusrav Bajan, a consultant at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital.

Many crematoriums are also struggling, according to press reports.

“Since 9am we have been waiting outside. Now it is 1 pm and still we need another 2-3 hours for our turn,” said one relative outside a Bengaluru crematorium. —