Indore: 21 cases of Omicron's BA.2 sub-lineage found in city

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): While the health department and administration continue to hide the numbers of cases of Omicron variant in the city, Shri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences has found 21 cases of the BA.2 sub lineage of Omicron variant of Covid-19.

Moreover, these 21 patients include a two-month-old boy and a 1-year-old girl among six kids infected with the same.

On the other hand, the district administration and health department didn’t report any cases of Omicron except the nine cases which were tested by the same private laboratory as they continue to claim no reports received from National Centre for Disease Control, New Delhi.

According to chairman of SAIMS Dr Vinod Bhandari, “During the genome sequencing of the samples of Covid patients admitted to the hospital in January, the BA.2 sub lineage of Omicron was found in 21 samples. Age group of these people falls between two-months to 86-years.”

Dr Bhandari also added that all of them were vaccinated with the two doses of vaccine except the patients falling in the pediatric group. One of the 21 patients has lung involvement of 40 percent while a man who has taken the precaution dose has only 1-3 percent of lung involvement.

BA.2 lineage has yet to be designated a VOC:

The INSACOG, in its latest bulletin, said while most Omicron cases in the country so far have been asymptomatic or mild, hospitalizations and ICU cases have increased in the current wave and the threat level remains unchanged.

"Omicron is now in community transmission in India and has become dominant in multiple metros, where new cases have been rising exponentially. BA.2 lineage is in a substantial fraction in India and S gene dropout based screening is thus likely to give high false negatives," the INSACOG said.

Couple of them are in ICU

Respiratory medicine expert of SAIMS Dr Ravi Dosi said that most of those infected with BA.2 sub lineage are stable but couple of them are in ICU. "A couple of elderly men and a young one having more lung infection is admitted to ICU and are under observation," he said.

Some of those found in earlier days of this month were discharged from the hospital.