Omicron spreading fast, but the Covid variant yet to reach India: Expert

By Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: Amid rising concern over the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of coronavirus, designated as a ‘variant of concern’ by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Senior professor and virologist Dr V Ravi of National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Science, Bengaluru, said that there is no need to panic, as there are no reports of infection in India so far.

He told News Trail, “With the news of this new-found variant circulating, there is a lot of speculation among the people. Everyone is anxious and wants to know about how virulent and contagious Omicron is. But to be honest, at this moment, we can just say that we have very limited information about it. With this information, we can say that the variant was first detected in South Africa through genome sequencing. In a matter of two weeks, the number of genomes that are positive for Omicron seems to have gone up from 10 per cent to 90 per cent, which is very fast.”

He pointed out that the virus has not been isolated yet. “Once we isolated it, then only we can compare the infection between delta, alfa or this Omicron. However, conclusively we can say that it is infectious and that is what best we can say at this point of time,” Dr Ravi said. However, he expressed concern about the speed with which it is spreading. “For the time being we seem to have an eminent challenger for Delta. Every day the number of infected cases is increasing and more countries are getting added to the list,” he said.

Genetically we have also found out that the variant has a number of mutations. It has taken advantage of alpha, beta and delta mutations. Until we isolate it, it is better to assume that it is highly infectious. So far there is no conclusive evidence unless we have a couple of hundreds of cases; it is difficult to say more about its symptoms or behaviour, Dr Ravi said.