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India Coronavirus Latest Update: India is witnessing a sudden spurt in COVID cases with 32 districts in the country, including 11 from Kerala and five from Maharashtra, are reporting a weekly Covid positivity rate of more than 10% while in 35 districts, including nine from Delhi, the weekly positivity is between 5 and 10%.
As per the updates from the health ministry, the country’s COVID tally increased to 4,32,83,793 on Saturday as 13,216 more people tested positive for the viral disease and the active caseload climbed to 68,108. Notably, this is the first time in 113 days that India has recorded over 13,000 cases.
Health experts believe that the current spike in Covid cases in the country is caused by the Omicron sub-lineages, mainly BA.2 and BA.2.38, and in some parts of the country BA.4 and BA.5.
As per a news report by ANI, India’s Covid genome sequencing facility, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) reviews the genomic surveillance data on Friday. The agency found that the BA.2 sub-variant was found in 60% of the cases and BA.2.38 in 33%. However, the percentage of BA.4 and BA.5 is still very less.
The consortium further added that in cities and states where clusters of infections have been found – Mumbai, Trivandrum, Puducherry, Mizoram, North-east, Delhi – NCR like Gurugram, Faridabad, and Kerala – most cases are of the BA.2 and BA.2.38 sub-variants.
One official told a news agency that these new variants are indicating higher transmissibility and dominating currently in most of the places. “Most cases are of mild infection that includes cold, cough, fever and body ache,” the official added.
The official added that no new variant of the virus has been found so far. In the meantime, states and Union territories have been asked to submit a “larger number” of samples for whole genome sequencing from districts and areas which have seen a surge in Covid-19 cases over a period of seven days.
“The idea behind asking states and Union territories to send larger number of samples is to keep a closer watch over the current circulating sublineagues of Omicron and its correlation to the current epidemiological picture,” news agency PTI quoted an official as saying.
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