Omicron Has Not Yet Replaced Delta as the Dominant Strain in India, Says ICMR Scientist

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday said that the delta variant of coronavirus is still the dominant strain circulating among infections in India and Omicron has not replaced it yet, meaning that the current Covid-19 measures and vaccines would remain effective. While Omicron cases may increase, it will necessarily not cause a heavy burden on the healthcare system, Dr Samiran Panda, additional director-general of ICMR told the Times of India.

As Omicron cases in India crossed the 100 mark on Friday, Panda said that most of them are travel-related. This picture emerged from samples sequenced so far and more details on Omicron are awaited, he said.

Panda advised people to continue following all Covid-19 protocols as preventive measures and assured that the vaccines are effective. He further said that the current number of Omicron-infected people is too low to draw any conclusions on community transmission of the new variant.

The ICMR scientist said that from such a small number of reported Omicron cases, all that can be gauged is some of them had a travel history and some came in contact with the confirmed ones.

“No plausible exposure could be identified for the rest. It is also important to appreciate that the number of infected individuals do not necessarily mean the number of symptom atic cases. The terms ‘infected individuals’ and ‘cases’ or ‘patients of Omicron’ are not synonymous,” he told Times of India.

Panda said that this is similar to South African countries and other nations that started reporting higher number of Omicron cases but not higher oxygen or ventilation requirements, severe illness, or death.

A study by London’s Imperial College, however, showed that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron coronavirus variant is more than five times higher and has shown no sign of being milder than Delta. “We find no evidence (for both risk of hospitalisation attendance and symptom status) of Omicron having different severity from Delta,” the study said, although it noted that data on hospitalisations remains very limited.

The data analysed was based on 333,000 cases, including 122,062 of Delta and 1,846 which were confirmed as the Omicron coronavirus variant through genome sequencing.

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