Fresh COVID-19 Cases Surge Above 18,000-Mark Amid Concern Over New Omicron Sub-Variant BA.2.75

 India's daily case tally has seen a surge as compared to Wednesday. The daily positivity rate has also increased to 4.32 per cent amid detection of new Omicron sub-variant.

As per WHO, the highest numbers of new COVID-19 cases were reported from India -- 112,456 new cases, an increase of 21 per cent.

Source : PTI

New Delhi: India reported 18,930 fresh cases, 14,650 recoveries, and 35 deaths, in the last 24 hours while active cases remained above the one lakh mark at  1,19,457 cases. The daily positivity rate has also increased to 4.32%. India's daily case tally has seen a surge as compared to Wednesday when the country was reported to have logged 16,159 fresh cases and 28 deaths in  24 hours. The positivity rate was at 3.56%. The active COVID cases surged to 1,19,457 from 1,15,212.  The weekly positivity rate stands at 3.86%.

The total case tally of the country now stands at 4,34,69,234. India's total death toll climbed to 5,25,305 after the addition of fresh fatalities.

The active cases comprise 0.26% of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.53%, the ministry said.

New COVID-19 Omicron sub-variant BA.2.75 detected in countries like India: WHO

This surge comes as World Health Organization informed about a new sub-lineage BA.2.75 of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that it has been detected in countries like India and the World Health Organization.

“On COVID-19, globally reported cases have increased nearly 30% over the past two weeks. Four out of six of the WHO sub-regions saw cases increase in the last week,” Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing Wednesday, as quoted by news agency PTI.

“In Europe and America, BA.4 and BA.5 are driving waves. In countries like India a new sub-lineage of BA.2.75 has also been detected, which we’re following,” he informed.

On the emergence of the potential Omicron sub-variant BA.2.75, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that there has been an emergence of a sub-variant that is being called the BA.2.75 “first reported from India and then from about 10 other countries.”

In a video posted on Twitter, she said there are still limited sequences available of the sub-variant to analyse, “but this sub-variant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein. So obviously, that's a key part of the virus that attaches itself to the human receptor. So we have to watch that. It's still too early to know if this sub-variant has properties of additional immune evasion or indeed of being more clinically severe. We don't know that.”

“So we have to wait and see,” she said, adding that WHO is tracking it, and the WHO Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is constantly looking at the data from around the world.

“And at any time if there is an emergence of a virus that looks very different from a previous one, enough to be called a separate variant of concern, then the committee will do that.”

The WHO weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19, released July 6, informed that the number of new weekly cases increased for the fourth consecutive week globally after a declining trend since the last peak in March 2022.

Since early June, the highest numbers of new cases in the South-East Asia Region were reported from India (112,456 new cases, an increase of 21 per cent), Thailand (15,950, an increase of 6 per cent) and Bangladesh (13,516 new cases, a 53 per cent increase).

WHO Incident Manager COVID-19 Abdi Mahamud stressed that now is not the time to declare that the pandemic is over.

“We're still in the midst of the pandemic and the virus has a lot of force left. So whether it is the BA.4 or BA.5 or BA.2.75, the virus will continue. It does what it does good,” he said adding that people and communities must continue to wear masks, avoid crowds and ensure that the most vulnerable and high-risk population is protected.

(With Agency Inputs)