Even as the Government is yet to disclose if the Covid-19 positive flyers from UK carry the new variant of the virus that originated in Britain, experts here said that the upcoming vaccination can tackle the strain.
Six more passengers arriving in two flights from the United Kingdom, which landed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) late on Tuesday night, have tested positive for Covid-19 and 50 passengers have been advised for institutional quarantine.
With this, the number of passengers from the UK who have tested positive at the IGIA has soared to 11. Five tested positive for the Covid-19 virus after arrival from the UK on Tuesday.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Wednesday took stock of the status of passengers coming from the UK to India and found that passengers were positive in ten States where the flights from UK to India land. Samples have been sent for genome sequencing. These States are Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Goa, Punjab, Gujarat, Kerala and Telangana. The Government has identified the labs for genome sequencing.
These are CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi; CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad; DBT-Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar; DBT-InStem-NCBS, Bangalore, DBT-National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, National Institute of Virology, Pune.
More such designated labs would increase over time and their details would be shared with the States/UTs, said the Ministry’s statement.
Gauri Agarwal, founder of the Genestrings Diagnostic Center, which is handling coronavirus testing of all passengers at the IGI airport, said that 11 passengers on four flights from the UK were found positive for COVID-19 when tested on arrival at the Delhi airport. Agarwal also said 50 passengers of the aforementioned four flights have been put under institutional quarantine.
“Testing was done comprehensively, as directed, irrespective of any existing reports or exemptions. A total of 950+ inbound passengers from London were tested at our lab at T3 terminal, IGI (Indira Gandhi International) Airport and 11 of them tested positive,” Agarwal explained. On Tuesday, at least 20 passengers from the UK were reported to have tested positive for COVID-19 at various airports across the country, including Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Following the declaration of the new strain, India on December 21 had suspended flights from UK from December 25 while tightening the RT-PCR norms. The new variant is said to be 70 per cent more transmissible than earlier versions of the coronavirus, as has also been pointed out by the latest Standard Operating Procedure issued by the Union Health Ministry. On Tuesday itself, 22 people — including six from Delhi — tested positive for the virus, and their samples were sent for genome sequencing.
Dr Anurag Agarwal, director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), one of the CSIR labs sequencing Sars-CoV-2 genomes said though the virus has found to be more transmissible, what brings relief is that the transmission could occur only if people were not wearing masks.
He said that some Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) kits that use the particular gene where the mutation has happened for detecting virus may give out false negatives. “We need to recalibrate our tests. The -PCR usually uses two genes to detect the presence of the virus, we might not insist on a double gene positive to give a positive report,” said Agarwal.
If precautions are not followed, the new variant may lead to super spreading events, the WHO too has indicated.
“We have had a much higher (contamination rate) at different points in this pandemic and we’ve got it under control,” WHO’s emergencies chief Michael Ryan said.
Dr Shahid Jameel, virologist and director of Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, opined that “it is likely that the new variant may have already come to India, you will find it only if you are looking for it. This is the reason why we need to scale up the number of genomic sequencing that we are doing. India has the second highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world and it is likely that some variant like it might have generated within the country too.”
NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul said at a presser recently that India will use its network of laboratories under the Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Biotechnology, and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research to sequence more samples, especially from the travellers from UK who test positive.
“Our labs have been asked to prioritise the recent virus samples and send them for genetic sequencing. The ICMR, CSIR, and DBT labs have been doing it so far but it will be scaled up. The positive specimen from passengers from UK in the last few days will also be sequenced,” he said.
Dr Agarwal added, “The vaccine produces many antibodies and even if some do not bind, the vaccine remains effective. Other than that, there is T-cell immunity that is generic and a mutation in the binding site does not change that.”
Thursday, 24 December 2020 | PNS | New Delhi
