PremiumThe Centre on Saturday asked the Karnataka government to take immediate measures where the Delta variant of coronavirus has been detected.
The Centre advised the Karnataka government to ramp up the Covid testing and prevent crowding and intermingling of people in districts that have reported the new variant of Covid-19.
So far, two cases of the Delta Plus variant of Covid-19 have been detected in Karnataka, as per the state's health minister Dr K Sudhakar.
One case was found in Mysuru and one in Bengaluru. The Mysuru patient is asymptomatic and none of his primary or secondary contacts have it, Sudhakar added.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has written to Karnataka Chief Secretary P Ravi Kumar in this regard. "The Public Health Response, in this case while broadly remaining the same, has to become more focused and stringent," he said.
The letter also asked the state to ensure that adequate samples of positive persons are sent to the designated laboratories of Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortia (INSACOG) promptly so that the clinical epidemiological correlations can be established. Besides, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappaheld a meeting with senior Ministers and officials on Friday and instructed officials to maintain vigil over the "Delta Plus" variant of coronavirus, especially in border districts.
Karnataka will be setting up six genome sequencing labs at Bengaluru, Mysuru, Shivamogga, Hubballi, Mangaluru, and Vijayapura, the state's health minister said.
Apart from Karnataka, the Centre also wrote a letter to Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat and Haryana. It asked these states and UTs to prevent crowds, conduct widespread testing, as well as increasing vaccine coverage due to the presence of the Delta Plus variant.
The Delta Plus variant which is currently a Variant of Concern (VOC) has characteristics like, increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells, and potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response.
Earlier in the day, the Centre said 51 cases of the Delta Plus variant of coronavirus have been found in 45,000 samples sequenced so far in the country with Maharashtra reporting the highest number of 22.
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