Five people from the state of Madhya Pradesh have been found infected with the ‘Delta Plus’ variant of coronavirus, three from Bhopal and two from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh and one of them has died. The State Medical Education Minister Vishwas Sarang said to news agency Press Trust of India that the other four persons who were vaccinated against COVID-19 are fine and one person from Ujjain, who died, was not inoculated.
The new ‘Delta Plus’ variant has been formed due to a mutation in the Delta or B.1.617.2 variant which was first identified in India. ‘Delta Plus’ has been declared a variant of concern by the Centre.
“A genome sequencing machine will soon be installed in Bhopal and the state would then not have to send samples to Delhi,” the Minister mentioned.
Ujjain Collector Ashish Singh confirmed that a 59-year-old woman, who died of COVID-19 on May 23, was infected with the ‘Delta Plus’ variant. She tested positive for coronavirus on May 17. Later, her sample was sent for genome sequencing. On Tuesday, it was found that she was infected by the ‘Delta Plus’ variant.
The officials said that earlier, the sample of a 65-year-old woman from Bhopal was sent to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on May 23 and it came out positive for the ‘Delta Plus’ variant on June 16. The woman, who had received both doses of the anti-COVID-19 vaccine, recovered in home isolation.
So far, 40 cases of the Delta Plus variant have been found in India, most of these cases are from Maharashtra, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh. While the Delta Plus variant’s virulence and transmissibility are being investigated, the government has asked these states to immediately take up containment measures.
Though there is no indication yet of the severity of the disease due to the new variant, ‘Delta Plus’ is resistant to the monoclonal antibody cocktail treatment for COVID-19 recently authorized in India.
On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh recorded 84 new cases of coronavirus and 21 fatalities, raising the tally of infections in the state to 7,89,499 and the number of deaths to 8,827, as per official data.
India reports 54,069 new Covid-19 cases, 1,321 deaths, active cases declines to 6,27,057. India has so far administered over 30 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines since the launch of the vaccination drive on January 16, according to Union Health Ministry’s data.
