PUNE/MUMBAI: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is currently examining the efficacy of the current vaccines on the emerging Delta-plus variant of Covid-19.
The union health ministry classified it as a variant of concern on Tuesday.
ICMR scientist Dr Samiran Panda said they are closely monitoring the neutralization capability of the serum of Covid vaccine recipients against Delta-plus variants which have been obtained from different sites.
He said the results should be out in a few weeks.
“We are examining samples obtained from different places to assess if they get neutralized by serum of the Covid-19 vaccine recipients.
Let’s hope that the vaccine effectiveness for this variant will continue,” he told TOI.
He further added that states should observe strict containment around clusters identified with the Delta-plus variant, ensure treatment of those infected, quarantine for the contacts and engage communities to address vaccine hesitancy.
As part of surveillance, the state has created ten sentinel sites, including five laboratories and tertiary care hospitals, from where samples are being randomly sent for analysis.
JJ Hospital been selected as the nodal centre from Mumbai.
In the coming few weeks, over 100 samples will be sent from districts to CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) laboratory in New Delhi.
Virologist Dr T Jacob John told TOI that so far, all variants of concern are neutralized by antibodies induced by infection by the “founder variant” that caused the first wave.
“Therefore, Delta-plus can be predicted to be protected by immunity induced by all vaccines,” he said.
“Delta Plus should remain on the radar — to avoid the blunder we made with Delta, detected in December 2020 which was not followed up for a while and came as the second wave.” He said there was no need for anxiety.
“After all, we are calling all of these as variants and not as ‘strains’.” The Centre on Tuesday directed Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala to focus on containment measures and increase contact tracing in the affected districts.
Maharashtra, which already has 21 cases, has issued guidelines for the affected districts, said state director of health services Dr Archana Patil.
Maharashtra COVID-19 task force member Dr Shashank Joshi on Wednesday said there is need for better genomic surveillance on vaccine breakthrough infections.
and that is being carried out currently.
(Inputs by Sumitra Deb Roy)