Hyderabad: After genome sequencing identified three cases of the ‘Kraken’ XBB.1.5 Covid variation in Telangana, doctors have allayed concerns that the variant won’t cause serious infections in Indians.
Five new cases were recorded in the state, three of which were in Hyderabad, according to the Covid bulletin that was published by the state’s health department on Wednesday.
According to experts, the Covid subvariant is gaining ground more quickly than most other variations in the United States. As of the last week of December, it was responsible for about 20% of Covid cases in the US, where it was originally discovered on November 14.
Any ICMR-certified researcher and head of the critical care unit at Nizamabad Government Hospital, Dr. Kiran Madhala, thought that any Variant has three essential traits: pathogenicity (how severe the illness will be), immunological evasion (how well it can dodge antibodies developed by prior infections or immunisations), and transmissibility (how rapidly it may spread).
Dr. Madhala claims that XBB.1.5 is 1.6 times more transmissible than BA.2, which was the virus that started the third wave in India. Of all the Omicron variants, it also possesses one of the greatest rates of immunological evasion. Despite this, it has a low pathogenicity, which is often inversely related to transmissibility.
Indians shouldn’t be concerned about this variety since, like the Omicron variants, it may induce fast infection spread despite immunisations or prior infection, but it will almost always only result in mild or asymptomatic infections the overwhelming majority of individuals. This is due to vaccination immunity and exposure to comparable mutations among the bulk of the Indian population. According to him, the parent XBB variety is also growing across the nation.
