PUNE A preliminary analysis of 75 samples that tested positive for BA.2.74, BA.2.75 and BA.2.76 sub-variants of Omicron has shown that all patients exhibited mild symptoms and recovered under home isolation, scientists involved in analysing the data said. The study was carried out at BJ Medical College and Sassoon General hospital, where a total of 125 samples of patients from Pune, Mumbai and Vidarbha were collected.
About the findings, Dr Rajesh Karyakarte, head, microbiology department, BJ Medical College, and scientist associated with the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), said that initial analysis of these 75 samples has shown that none of the patients needed hospital admission. “The first sample of BA.2.75 variant was from Pune and tested positive on June 29, 2022. Since then, an alert was flagged to the state health department. On Thursday, a preliminary study of 75 out of the 125 samples was carried out to understand the cases in detail. It was found that the patients did not require any hospitalisation and exhibited mild symptoms,” said Dr Karyakarte. He added that a detailed study related to the samples has been undertaken at the hospital.
On Thursday, the state health department issued a report that 20 new patients have tested positive for the BA.2.75 sub-variant in the Nagpur division as per the latest report released by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur.
{{/usCountry}}On Thursday, the state health department issued a report that 20 new patients have tested positive for the BA.2.75 sub-variant in the Nagpur division as per the latest report released by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur.
{{/usCountry}}Dr Pradeep Awate, state surveillance officer, said that a detailed epidemiological investigation of these patients is currently underway. This has taken the tally of BA.2.75 variant patients in the state to 30. On Wednesday, 10 cases of the BA.2.75 variant were found in Pune. “All these samples were taken in the period between June 15 and July 5. Out of these, 11 belonged to men and nine to women. One patient is less than 18 years of age, nine patients are 19 to 25 years’ old, six patients are 26 to 50 years’ old, and four patients are more than 50 years’ old. There are 17 patients who were vaccinated. Based on the preliminary information, all these patients were either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and all have recovered from their illness by now,” said Dr Awate.
Experts believe that globally, the BA.2 Omicron lineage has been seen to replace the BA.1 lineage. As the BA.2 lineage, which is largely responsible for latest spike, is evolving, many sub-lineages of BA.2 are now developing with a set of distinct mutations. B.2.75 is a similar sub-lineage of BA.2. In Maharashtra, Covid cases have begun plateauing with 2,678 fresh Covid patients and eight deaths reported in the state on Thursday. Pune district reported 941 new cases of Covid on Thursday and one death from Pune rural.