Highlights
- WHO confirmed a new sub-variant of the existing Omicron variant in India.
- Four out of six of the WHO sub-regions saw cases increase in the last week.
- WHO Director-General said that the world body was following the development.
Covid 19 India Omicron sub-variant: The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday confirmed that a new sub-variant of the existing Omicron variant of Covid-19 has entered India, called BA.2.75. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the world body was following the development. "On COVID-19, globally reported cases have increased nearly 30 per cent over the past two weeks. Four out of six of the WHO sub-regions saw cases increase in the last week," Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
"In Europe and America, BA.4 and BA.5 are driving waves. In countries like India a new sub-lineage of BA.2.75 has also been detected, which we're following," the WHO chief said.
Also Read: COVID-19: India logs 18,930 fresh cases, 35 deaths in last 24 hours; active cases jump to 1,19,457
During the briefing yesterday, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that there has been an emergence of a sub-variant that is being called the BA.2.75. "First reported from India and then from about 10 other countries," she said.
"There are still limited sequences available of the sub-variant to analyse, but this sub-variant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein. So obviously, that's a key part of the virus that attaches itself to the human receptor. So we have to watch that. It's still too early to know if this sub-variant has properties of additional immune evasion or indeed of being more clinically severe. We don't know that," the Chief Scientist said.
"So we have to wait and see," she said, adding that the world health body is tracking it and its Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is constantly looking at the data from across the world.
On Thursday, India recorded 18,930 new cases of the novel coronavirus, along with 35 deaths due to the infection in the past 24 hours. According to the data shared by the Union Health Ministry on Thursday (July 7), the country saw a total of 14,650 discharges in the last 24 hours, taking the total recovery rate at around 98.53 per cent and total recoveries data reached to 4,29,21,977.
(With ANI Inputs)
