Nagpur: 20 cases of BA.2.75 sub-variant of Omicron detected

20 new patients infected with BA.2.75 sub-variant of Omicron were detected in Nagpur division, according to the latest report released by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) Nagpur on Thursday.

According to the health bulletin, all these samples were taken during 15th June and 5th July 2022. Out of these, 11 were men and 9 were women, and 17 of these patients were vaccinated, it added.

Based on the preliminary information, all these patients were either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and all have recovered from their illness by now, the bulletin further said, adding that a detailed epidemiological investigation of these patients is currently underway.

With this, the tally of BA.2.75 sub-variant patients in Maharashtra has gone up to 30.

Earlier today, World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that a new sub-variant BA.2.75 of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been detected in various countries including India.

Chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) Soumya Swaminathan, meanwhile, said it was too early to call the sub-variant BA.2.75 more severe.

Besides India, BA.2.75 has also been reported from 10 other countries, Swaminathan said in a Twitter post, adding that and "the WHO is tracking it".

"There's still limited sequencing available to analyse but this subvariant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor binding domain of the spike protein. That's the key part of the virus that attaches itself to the human receptor. So we have to watch that," she said.

"However, it is still too early to known that this sub-variant has properties of immune evasion or being more clinically severe," she added.

Published on: Thursday, July 07, 2022, 06:29 PM IST