CHENNAI: A day after the health ministry categorised the Delta plus variant of Sars Cov 2 as a ‘variant of concern’, a Bengaluru-based lab confirmed the first case of the variant in Chennai.
The patient, a nurse from a private hospital at Adyar who tested positive in May, has recovered from the ailment, public health officials said.
Until now, Tamil Nadu has sent more than 1,159 samples to the lab, Instem, for whole genome sequencing.
The lab is a part of INSACOG (a consortium of 10 labs that track the presence of variants in Covid samples).
Results of more than 772 samples have been returned by the lab so far.
The results that arrived on Wednesday showed that samples drawn from the 32-year-old nurse was found to be Delta-plus variant.
“This is the only sample that has returned positive for Delta-plus in TN so far.
There are 16 other variants including Alpha and Beta.
But nearly 72% of the samples (556) were Delta variants,” health secretary J Radhakrishnan said.
“The nurse is doing well and has no post-Covid complications.
We did not see large clusters or increase in cases in the hospital she worked in,” he said.
The nurse tested positive on May 4.
She had mild symptoms and was advised home isolation.
She tested negative on May 19 and rejoined duty the next day.
Her contacts – at home and workplace – tested negative for Covid-19.
Health officials said while both Delta and Delta-plus variants – which have higher transmission rates — may have been in circulation during the second wave, it did not make a difference in prevention or treatment.
The state has collected samples from across the state in seven categories – family clusters, community clusters, Covid in children, young adults with severe lung infection, breakthrough infections (infected 14 days after two vaccinations), samples from deceased and travellers.
“This will give us more information about the variants seen in category,” a senior pathologist said.
“It is important to study variants to know the behaviour of the virus,” he said.