Covid-19 pandemic: No Deltacron variant found in India so far

So far, the Deltacron variant has not been spotted in India, government sources have said. However, the scale of genome sequencing of Covid-positive samples will be increased four-fold — from 10,000 samples per month to 8,000-10,000 a week.

“There is no Deltacron variant in India; we can very categorically say this,” said a senior member of the  Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), the consortium which is tracking Covid-19 virus strains in the country through genome sequencing of samples.

The person, however, admitted that there are instances of “mixed infections”. “There are instances of mixed infections — Omicron with Delta — which we have picked up initially. Now, the cases are 100 percent Omicron. In the beginning of the third wave when Delta was in circulation, we saw some mixed cases. Now Omicron is the leading variant,” he adds.

Explaining cases of mixed infections he says — if someone meets two persons who are carrying two different strains, and that person can get both infections at the same time. This is called mixed or combination infection. This is caused by recombination of variants, not mutations in the virus.

The Insacog, however, is on high alert and is tracking the genomes across different samples it collects from across the country.

“We are very closely looking for any Deltacron variant. Genome sequencing is done very meticulously; every virus strain is very carefully studied,” he said.

At present, 51 institutions are part of the Insacog network.

“We were doing genome sequencing for 10,000 samples a month on an average. Now, we are trying to scale this up to 10,000 samples every week, about a four-fold jump. There are 51 institutions under Insacog, and if need be, the network could be further expanded,” the person quoted above said.
 

Insacog started doing Covid-19 genome sequencing in December 2020, and 180,000 samples have gone through genome sequencing.

Whenever any country detects a new strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, it shares the structure of the virus, the clinical picture and relevant data with the international community immediately.

“We load the structure on the national portal, and then also in one international portal all countries upload the virus structure. The data becomes public, and then countries start looking for that structure in the samples they sequence,” he said.

“It is too early to say if Deltacron is lethal. Scientists across the globe are studying the strains and the nature of infections to assess this. One needs to see the virus’s transmission ability, epidemiology, etc, to understand it,” the person added.  

UK has called it a variant under investigation. Australia has also reported a similar pattern. Clarity on the variant’s ability to cause damage will emerge after more genome sequencing is done across countries.