COVID-19 is on the verge of becoming endemic but Indian scientists are keeping a close watch on each new variant and the government would continue to maintain a high alert, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said, underlining that the virus has managed to survive and is going to stay.
The latest variant is the most heavily mutated version discovered so far.
Two known Omicron sub-variants -- rather than any new variants -- have chiefly been responsible for the recent Covid-19 surge in China, according to a study of cases in Beijing published in The Lancet journal.
The Delhi government has called a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority to discuss steps that need to be taken in view of threat of a new Covid-19 variant from African countries, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday.
Vaccines Covishield and Covaxin work against SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, while effectiveness tests against the Delta Plus variant is ongoing, the government said.
The B.1.640.2 variant has been reported by researchers at institute IHU Mediterranee Infection in at least 12 cases, and has been linked to travel to African country Cameroon.
Mortality rates were 0.7 per cent for Delta, 0.4 per cent for the original Omicron variant and 0.3 per cent for Omicron BA.2.
As India witnessed the highest number of Covid cases in over four months, former All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday said the new XBB.1.16 variant could be driving the recent rise but emphasised there was no need for panic as long it does not cause severe illness and deaths.
While Delta wiped out the variants that preceded it, Omicron has not eliminated the deadly variant which could re-emerge.
The WHO's move came nearly three weeks after India objected to the B.1.617 mutant of the novel coronavirus being termed an 'Indian Variant' in media reports with the Union Health Ministry pointing out that the UN's top health organ has not used the word 'Indian' for this strain in its document.
However, the "good news" is that the US vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, said Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
America's top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said that the new COVID-19 Omicron variant is in 'fluid motion' in South Africa and the US scientists are in 'very active' communication with their colleagues in that country to test the strain, get facts and find out whether or not it evades the antibodies.
The Delta Plus variant have been detected sporadically in Maharashtra, Kerala and MP.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in a statement urged world leaders not to implement 'knee-jerk' policy decisions in response to the detection of the Omicron variant.
'This means that there is a higher likelihood of individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 to be reinfected with the Omicron variant'
The COVID-19 vaccines can be "tweaked" to provide protection against new variants of the virus, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, Director Dr Randeep Guleria said.
The coronavirus variant B.1.617 first identified in India last year has been classified as a "variant of global concern", with some preliminary studies showing that it spreads more easily, a senior WHO official had said on Monday.
Bharat Biotech on Wednesday said a study has demonstrated that a booster dose of Covaxin has a neutralising effect on the Omicron and Delta variants of COVID-19.
It was on January 30, 2020 when a third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.
On June 14, the World Health Organization designated the Lambda variant, previously known by its formal scientific name C.37, as the seventh and newest "variant of interest".
The highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has mutated further to form the 'Delta plus' or 'AY.1' variant but there is no immediate cause for concern in India as its incidence in the country is still low, scientists in New Delhi said.
The move came soon after Belgium confirmed a case of the B.1.1.529 variant in someone who had travelled back from Egypt earlier this month, with the European Union (EU) member states agreeing to a snap travel ban on seven African nations.
IndusInd Bank was the top loser in the Sensex pack, tanking over 6 per cent, followed by Maruti, Tata Steel, NTPC, Bajaj Finance, HDFC and Titan. NSE Nifty plunged 509.80 points to 17,026.45.
The ministry dismissed as "without any basis and unfounded" media reports that have used the term "Indian variant" for the B.1.617 mutant strain, which the WHO recently said was a "variant of global concern".
Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus on Thursday said it plans to invest up to Rs 6,000 crore in its India business over the next three years. The company plans to make the investment in tranches of Rs 2,000 crore annually for the next three years under 'Project Starlight'. OnePlus on Thursday announced an annual investment of Rs 2,000 crore over the next three years to accelerate innovations in products and services in India.
"This antibody is both highly neutralising (meaning it works very well at low concentrations) and broadly neutralising (meaning it works against all variants)," said Michael S Diamond, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, US.
Breakthrough infections of coronavirus cases comprise a very high proportion of the Delta variant, the INSACOG, a genome sequencing government consortium of laboratories, has said.
The Delta variant of COVID-19, or the B1.617.2 variant of concern (VOC) first identified in India, is about 60 per cent more transmissible than the Alpha strain identified in the United Kingdom and also reduces the effectiveness of vaccines to some extent, UK health experts report.
Mu -- also known by its scientific name as B.1.621 -- was first identified in Colombia in January 2021, and since then, there have been 'sporadic reports' of cases and some larger outbreaks in South America and Europe, the United Nations health agency said in its weekly bulletin on the pandemic on Tuesday.
The World Health Organisation has issued warning against XE, a new variant of Omicron first detected in the UK.
WHO has declared B.1.617 as a "variant of concern" and the update noted that this variant has "increased transmissibility", disease severity is "under investigation", risk of reinfection is "under investigation, possible modest reduction in neutralization activity (B.1.617.1)".
Researchers at Public Health Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, UK, found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered better protection against the Delta variant compared to the Oxford-AstraZeneca preventive, known as Covishield in India.
Experts in Singapore, which is seeing a surge in Omicron cases, have warned that the new and supposedly more contagious variant is likely to replace Delta over the coming weeks as the dominant global variant, with the virus being fitter and having a reproductive advantage.
'I think we just got to make the protocol we set out: that if you're flying from China, you got to be tested, and so on'
The WHO said the four current 'Variants of Concern' being monitored closely - Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta - are widespread and have been detected in all WHO regions.
With the reporting of Omicron, a highly mutated variant of SARSCoV-2 virus and its classification as a Variant of Concern (VoC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Union Ministry of Health revised its 'Guidelines for international arrivals', Mandaviya said in a written reply.
A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which cause COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other countries globally which could be more transmissible and evade protection provided by vaccines, according to study.
'The key purpose of vaccination is to prevent hospitalisation, severe disease, and death.' 'All vaccines work equally, although mild disease cannot be prevented.'
The South African authorities said the detected cases and percentage of people testing positive are both increasing quickly, particularly in particularly in most populated province of Gauteng, North West and Limpopo regions of the country.
The study, which was conducted on more than 100 healthcare workers at three centres in India including Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, found that the B.1.617.2 Delta variant not only dominates vaccine-breakthrough infections with higher respiratory viral loads compared to non-Delta infections (Ct value of 16.5 versus 19) but also generates greater transmission among the fully vaccinated HCWs.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances