Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya while speaking on the sidelines of a book launch on Wednesday said that the vaccines available in India are effective against the Omicron sub-variant, BF.7. Mandaviya was attending the launch of the book ‘Braving a Viral Storm: India’s Covid-19 Vaccine Story’ when he made the remark.
While apprising of the situation, the health minister said, “We’ve found the BF.7 variant in some passengers. However, our vaccine is effective enough to fight the BF.7 variant. We’re taking all necessary measures,”
Mandaviya also informed that the government has traced 8,700 flights so far keeping in mind the spread of the fourth wave of Covid-19 in the world. He explained that over 15 lakh passengers have been traced and over 200 of them were detected to be Covid positive.
The Omicron subvariant BF.7 has been discovered in several of the 200 Covid-positive samples of international air passengers that have been genome-sequenced thus far.
While informing about the situation, the Union health minister said, “All of them were sent for isolation and their samples were sent for genome sequencing. Through genome sequencing, we’ve found Covid BF.7 variant in some passengers. However, our vaccine is effective enough to fight the BF.7 variant. We’re taking all necessary measures,”
On January 9, the health ministry confirmed that sentinel-sequencing of 324 Covid-positive samples taken from the community between December 29 and January 7 had revealed the presence of all Omicron variants, including BA.2 and its sub-lineages BA.2.75, XBB(37), BQ.1 and BQ.1.1(5), among others.
As per the health ministry, 4,41,47,322 people have recovered from the Covid-19 virus since the beginning of the pandemic and over 220 crore vaccines have been administered under the Nationwide Vaccination Drive so far.
Officials say India has remained in a “reasonably comfortable position” over the past 12 months. Dr NK Arora, Chairman of COVID-19 working group NTAGI believes there isn’t any indication of the upsurge of cases in the coming days or weeks.
While speaking about India’s success in identifying over 300 sub-variants of Covid-19 and managing to keep the cases within a reasonable limit, Dr Arora said “Our genomic surveillance system has identified almost 300 plus sub-variants of Omicron and they are spread all over the place. From time to time a certain sub-lineage becomes dominant. But the important point is that throughout the years we did not have any massive increase or surge in hospitalizations or deaths,”
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