New Delhi: Amidst the ever-increasing cases of corona in India, another variant XBB.1.16.1 has come to the fore. Its 116 cases have been reported in nine states of the country. It is worth noting that this infection is also being found in children. A new symptom of this includes the redness in the eyes.
The change in the corona variant was mentioned by the officials on Friday in a meeting chaired by Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya. The meeting, conducted through video conferencing, was informed that the XBB sub-format had emerged after the Omicron format was changed. This form is responsible for the increasing cases of corona in India at present.
Cases of this corona variant have been confirmed in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Haryana, Kerala and Puducherry. Dr. Scaria said that apart from India, more than 80 sequences of XBB.1.16.1 sub-variants have been uploaded in 13 countries so far. This shows that the virus is changing its form in other countries as well.
Change in spike protein
Dr. Vinod Scaria, Senior Scientist, IGIB, New Delhi, said that the new variant is still very fresh. We can not say much about it. The platform on which the whole world is sharing genome sequencing data, there are only one or two sequences about this new XBB.1.16.1 sub-variant. Which has been uploaded from India. Compared to XBB.1.16, the only significant change detected so far is T5471.
Active patients 28,303; Infection rate 3.39 percent
There has been a spurt in the cases of corona infection again. 6,050 new corona patients have been found in the country in 24 hours. This is the highest number of new Covid infected in a day after 203 days. Due to this, the number of active cases of corona i.e. patients under treatment has increased to 28,303 in the country. The daily rate of infection in the country is 3.39 percent and the weekly rate is 3.02 percent.
Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya held a high-level meeting with health ministers through video conferencing. He said that it is very important to check, treat and monitor the patient at the right time. At the beginning of the meeting, the National Center for Disease Control presented the details of the corona test before the health ministers. Officials said that it should be mandatory to test at least 140 samples per one lakh population, but this figure is very low in many states in the week till April 7.
