New Delhi:
New COVID-19 variants will continue to emerge, but the new variants do not cause serious illness or increase the number of cases, said Chairman of India’s COVID-19 Working Group, National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), Dr. NK Arora.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Dr. Arora: “Variants will keep coming, but right now they are not causing serious illness or an increase in the number of cases.”
“So I would like to tell people that these variants will continue to occur. There is nothing to panic about. Because at the moment there is none of the variants that cause serious illness as evidenced by the facts and figures given by The Indian data Second is that whether any of these patients or their contacts had a more serious illness, that is also not true,” he added.
On cases of XE variants reported in Maharashtra and Gujarat, Dr. Arora: “Whatever is currently described from the XE variant in India, it is only through the first test layer. So you have less confidence whether it is XE or whether it is something different in the original XE variant that was described from one of the states. Then it was discovered that it is either XM or XJ, not XE. So it just shows that these variants with only one test are very difficult and especially when new variants come out.”
dr. Arora further explained that three layers of tests are needed and that INSACOG is closely monitoring: “So, what is happening in India, where XE has also been reported after the first test, whether it be Gujarat or Maharashtra, the local tests have no unnecessary increase in the number of cases in those areas is in the contacts of the people, where this virus circulated. So the first concern that if a new subvariant of Omicron is described, whether it is growing faster, we follow very closely and have INSACOG nothing found so far, which is worrying.”