Virus may be down, but state hasn't taken lens off it

The state may be reporting less number of coronavirus cases, but the government seems not willing to take chances as it continues the focus on the virus.

Health commissioner D Randeep has said that the state is conducting rigorous genome sequencing to identify new variants.

The health department, on Monday, said 71 Covid positive passengers had arrived in the state from the UK since January. This assumes significance in the light of the new XE variant of Covid, the more transmissible cousin of Omicron, being detected in the UK.

XE variant

“Positive samples from all international passengers are currently being sent for genome sequencing. Of the 71 samples that have been sent, 68 are Ba.2 sub-lineage of Omicron and results are awaited for the remaining three,” Randeep said.

Out of these 71, a total of 57 arrived on January, 11 in February, and three passengers in March.

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The UK first detected the XE variant on January 19 and has since reported about 600 sequences of the variant.

XE is a recombinant, which is a mutation of Ba.1 and Ba.2 Omicron strains.

Recombinant mutations emerge when a patient is infected by multiple variants of Covid-19.

So far, only two cases of recombinant virus (Omicron+Delta) have been found in Karnataka between January and March.

The dominant variant of concern in Karnataka has been the Ba.2 sublineage of Omicron.

“As of now, the monthly Covid positives are minimal. If the numbers increase, priority will be given to sequence samples from the UK,” he said.

Corporeal Health Solutions (CHS) started pre-screening of symptomatic passengers free-of-cost at Kempegowda international airport in Bengaluru on March 25 for Covid-19 and other lung abnormalities by taking chest x-rays and using artificial intelligence to aid radiologists.

Hariharan P, founder of CHS, said till April 2, a total of 1,928 passengers were screened. Out of these, 24 were found to have lung abnormalities.

“In view of the XE variant, it is more important to screen passengers. The average age of passengers found with abnormalities was 41 years. We found patients who are likely cases of tuberculosis, Covid, pneumonia and cardiomegaly. We conveyed the radiological findings to the patients and it is up to them to get confirmatory tests (like RT-PCR test) done,” he said.

The screening is being done as part of a study for which the target sample size is 2,500 and above, for three months.

Nothing to worry: expert

Virologist Dr Jacob John told DH, “If Karnataka finds the XE variant (which may be 10 per cent more transmissible than Ba.2 as per WHO) in the state’s population, we need not worry as we are all immune. We are saturated with Ba.2. We just need to continue to track the virus.”

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