Delta Plus not that virulent, only 86 cases recorded so far

The Union health ministry has said in the last four months, 86 Delta Plus cases have been detected in the country, which proves that this variant does not have any over and above impact than the Delta variant. Speaking at the health ministry's press briefing on Tuesday in New Delhi Niti Aayog (health) member VK Paul said some new findings on Delta, on the other hand, reveals how strong and fast transmissible the variant is. It also increases hospitalisation.  If I explain it in simple terms, then the transmissibility of the original virus was 100, Alpha was 160 and Delta is 250. Its strength is emerging in front of us now. It is fast and many people are getting infected by one person, Dr Paul said and added that the Delta variant is ruling the world today.The ministry also published the reproduction rate of the states and said that if the reproduction rate of Covid-19 is higher in any state, it indicates that there will be a rapid spread in future, even if the number of fresh infections at present may not be alarming. 

Speaking about the Sentinel sites, Dr SK Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said  the WHO has come out with a strategy that the sentinel sites need to be identified and representative samples from every district of every state should be genome sequenced. "It should be tested if there is any mutant that will cause a public impact in the time to come," he said. Sentinel sites were affixed across the country and all states were asked to identify a minimum of five labs and five tertiary care hospitals, and see if the sentinel sites represented samples of a representative district. Dr Singh said, "The variants of concern that we monitor are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Delta Plus. There are two variants under investigation - Kappa and B1617.3." We need to look for new mutants because they can reach anywhere any time, he said.