The latest update from WHO showed that between June 24 and July 21, an average of 17,358 Covid-19 samples were tested per week across 85 countries. India also recorded 908 new Covid-19 cases and two deaths between June and July this year.
India must be prepared for another outbreak of Covid-19, an expert said on Friday, amid rising cases in several countries, including the United States and South Korea. According to estimates by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Covid infections are rising in 25 states in the country. South Korea is also experiencing an outbreak with a significant number of related hospitalizations.
The latest update from the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed that between June 24 and July 21, an average of 17,358 Covid-19 samples were tested every week across 85 countries. India also witnessed 908 new Covid-19 cases and two deaths between June and July this year, according to the WHO. “While the situation is not severe in India like the other countries, we need to be really prepared for it,” Professor Deepak Sehgal, a virologist at Shiv Nadar University in Noida, told IANS.
“The virus has certainly re-emerged. And WHO has reported that there have been about 26 per cent deaths and an 11 per cent increase in the incidence of this virus. And that is quite alarming,” he added. The recent outbreak is driven by KP variants, belonging to the Omicron lineage. Omicron was highly transmissible and showed extensive immune escape. First identified globally in January, KP.2 is a descendant of Omicron’s JN.1. In India, KP.2 was first detected in December 2023 in Odisha.
The KP strains are the derivatives of the Omicron variant with three mutations in the spike region, Sehgal said. INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium) data showed that the variant is already circulating in India. KP.x, which includes KP.3.1.1 and its relatives like the FLiRT or KP.2 variant, accounts for nearly 39 per cent of all Covid sequencing samples in India collected in the last week of July.
Meanwhile, the Union Health Ministry’s Covid dashboard showed that several Indian states are seeing a surge in Covid cases, with 279 active cases. Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are seeing a surge in infections. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the highly communicable disease
The KP.1 and KP.2 strains, which evolved from the JN.1 Omicron variant, are responsible for the surge in Covid cases in India. However, there has been no increase in hospitalisations or disease severity so far, Union Health Minister JP Nadda told Parliament in July. Mr Sehgal said the “government has stepped up surveillance, particularly with genome sequencing”. Efforts are also underway to ensure that vaccines and booster doses are easily available to the population. “We can have one dose of a booster vaccine which would really help. Otherwise, there are a lot of risks that we would have to mitigate going forward,” the expert said.
(Inputs: IANS)
