Tag: delta variant

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-Top News COVID-19 UK News

No evidence Omicron has lower severity than Delta variant

The yet-to-be-published study used data for all PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases in England who had taken a COVID-19 test between November 29 and December 11, 2021…reports Asian Lite News.

There is “no evidence” that Omicron has a lower severity than the Delta strain, according to a study in the UK which also found that the new variant of coronavirus largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses.

The study by researchers from Imperial College London in the UK estimates that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant.

This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19 per cent, the researchers said.

“The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection,” the authors of the study said. “However, hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time,” they added.

The yet-to-be-published study used data for all PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases in England who had taken a COVID-19 test between November 29 and December 11, 2021.

The research included people identified as having Omicron infection due to an S gene target failure (SGTF), as well as people with genotype data that confirmed Omicron infection.

Overall, 196,463 people without S gene target failure — those likely to be infected with another variant — and 11,329 cases with it were included in the analysis, as well as 122,063 Delta and 1,846 Omicron cases in the genotype analysis.

The results suggest that the proportion of Omicron among all COVID cases was doubling every two days up to December 11, the researchers said.

They estimate that the reproduction number (R) — the number of cases directly caused by an infected individual — of Omicron was above 3 over the period studied.

“This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College London.

“This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health,” Ferguson said in a statement.

Controlling for vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and specimen date, Omicron was associated with a 5.40 fold higher risk of reinfection compared with Delta, the study found.

The reinfection risk estimated in the current study suggests this protection has fallen to 19 per cent against an Omicron infection, according to the researchers.

They found a significantly increased risk of developing a symptomatic Omicron case compared to Delta for those who were two or more weeks past their second vaccine dose, and two or more weeks past their booster dose for AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines.

“Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0 per cent and 20 per cent after two doses, and between 55 per cent and 80 per cent after a booster dose,” the researchers added.

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-Top News China COVID-19

China sounds Covid alarm as Delta strain spreads far and wide

At least 15 of the nation’s 31 provinces have confirmed Delta strain infections over the past two weeks, marking China’s biggest outbreak since 2020….reports Asian Lite News

China is facing its biggest Covid outbreak since the disease first emerged there in late 2019, with the Delta variant now spreading far and wide.

Asia Times said that China’s seemingly impregnable COVID-19 firewall is springing leaks, with the country logging more local cases in 20 days than in the previous five months combined.

China in May shored up its border to fence all provinces and cities to keep out the novel coronavirus after the nation largely banished the pandemic after it first emerged in the city of Wuhan, says Frank Chen writing in the Asia Times.

The measures were hastily put in place before the summer of 2020 and now China’s firewall has become nearly impregnable and is being strengthened as the West edges towards loosening its entry requirements as caseloads fall amid vaccination campaigns.

Meanwhile, the different approaches of China and the West are plain to see as Chinese ministries responsible for health and border protection have scrambled to send updated directives to border cities, airports and checkpoints that aim to beef up the country’s defenses against so-called “backflows”, wrote Chen.

At least 15 of the nation’s 31 provinces have confirmed Delta strain infections over the past two weeks, marking China’s biggest outbreak since 2020. The disease’s spread is believed to have started from a foreign flight at Nanjing’s airport in early July.

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The National Health Commission (NHC) said 328 cases have been reported since last month, including in the central city of Wuhan, the origin epicenter of the global pandemic. Authorities reported 99 new cases on Monday, according to reports.

Millions are now in lockdown as authorities lock down cities and restrict travel to arrest the contagion’s further spread. The outbreak has been sparked in part by a recent easing of mask-wearing and social distancing, a laxity caused by the fact the country was Covid-free for many months, reported Asia Times.

China’s strict Covid containment measures, including mass testing as soon as a case appears, pervasive contact tracing, widespread use of quarantines and targeted lockdowns, have subdued more than 30 previous flareups over the past year.

While the infection figure is still modest by international standards, the NHC does not count asymptomatic carriers in its case tally and official figures are known to be conservative given the widespread tendency for underreporting, says Frank Chen.

The NHC added 55 local cases on Sunday but there were also 44 patients with no outward symptoms and thus were not categorized as confirmed infections. The highly contagious Delta variant is known for spreading among mostly asymptomatic people.

State media have trumpeted China’s zero-case approach to Covid control but shutting out the Delta strain is proving a taller order. The disease’s spread is also raising questions about the efficacy of locally made vaccines against delta, in particular, reports Chen.

Nanjing, the capital of the eastern Jiangsu province, is believed to be ground zero of the nationwide flare-up. The city’s airport workers, most of whom were fully vaccinated, reportedly first contracted the Delta strain from arrivals from Moscow on July 10, before passing it to transit passengers who spread it to their destinations across China.

At least 52 communities and residential quarters in Nanjing and its neighboring cities like Yangzhou have been red-flagged by the NHC as high or medium-risk areas to be locked down. Anyone leaving these areas will face 14-21 days of compulsory quarantine and criminal charges. Three rounds of city-wide testing in Nanjing yielded 204 cases as of August 1.

Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province, now faces a double whammy of flooding and Covid-19. Large tracts of the city were swamped by disastrous rainstorms two weeks ago with fatalities still being reported.

Moreover, Wuhan, capital of Hubei and Covid’s initial epicenter, is now reinstating some anti-epidemic measures and is on the lookout for close contacts after news broke on Monday afternoon that seven migrant workers there tested positive, reported Asia Times. (ANI)

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-Top News Asia News Nepal

Nepal confirms new mutant of Delta variant of Covid-19

Nepal’s Ministry of Health and Population confirmed the presence of Kappa variant (B.1.617.1), a variant of interest amongst others….reports Asian Lite News

Nepal has confirmed infection of a new mutant of COVID-19’s Delta variant as the cases continues to rise with the relaxation of prohibitory orders.

Nepal’s Ministry of Health and Population confirmed the presence of Kappa variant (B.1.617.1), a variant of interest amongst others. The Himalayan nation already has reported cases of Alta and Delta variants.

“All 47 samples tested recently were confirmed to be Delta variant. However, three of them are found to be new mutant known as K417N of the Delta variant,” the ministry said in a release.

Nepal has so far recognized Alfa (B.1.617.1) and Deta variant (B.1.617.2) as variant of concern and Kappa variant (B.1.617.1) as variant of interest.

“It is said that the newly-detected mutant of the Delta variant is more fatal than the mutants detected before. These mutants are likely to infect people with all age groups,” read the release.

The MoHP has urged all people to take extra precautions and follow health safety standards to avoid possible infection of this virus.

Nepal delta Covid variant

The ministry has also asked all to prepare for the third wave of COVID-19 which experts have said would be far more challenging than the first wave and the second waves of the pandemic.

Nepal on Tuesday itself recorded a total of 3,899 new cases of COVID-19 taking the national tally to 742,817. A total of 12,655 swab samples using RT-PCR method, of which 2,726 returned positive and 4863 people underwent antigen tests for the virus, of which an additional 1,173 tested positive.

Of total tests, 21.54 per cent of the PCR and 24.12 per cent of antigen samples returned positive, keeping the overall per-day positivity rate at 22.25 per cent. As of today, there are 30,009 active cases across the country. Of them, 2,898 are hospitalised, 611 in intensive care units and 171 on ventilators.

In the past 24 hours, 1,778 people have achieved recovery whereas 20 deaths have been reported. Of the total cases so far, 647,079 people have recovered. Likewise, 9,758 died, according to the ministry.

Likewise, 1,457,670 people have been fully vaccinated whereas 3,462,340 have been vaccinated with a single dose. Nepal’s current positivity rate is 94.4 per cent whereas the death rate is 1.5 per cent. (ANI)

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Categories
-Top News COVID-19 Europe

‘Delta variant now dominant in most of Europe’

Recently, the Spanish government had announced that travellers from Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia and Namibia will have to spend 10 days in quarantine following their arrival in the country…reports Asian Lite News.

The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant of concern is now the dominant variant in most of Europe, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the WHO said that efforts to prevent transmission of the Delta variant must be reinforced.

The WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) shows that between June 28 and July 11 the Delta variant was dominant in the majority (19 countries) of the 28 countries that reported sufficiently complete genetic sequencing information,” says a statement from WHO and ECDC.

“In these 19 countries, the median proportion of all nationally sequenced virus isolates detected that were Delta was 68.3 per cent, overtaking that for the previously dominant Apla variant (22.3 per cent) across the region,” it said.

The Delta variant will be the globally dominant strain over the coming months and has already been identified in almost all European countries. It will continue to spread, displacing circulation of other variants unless a new more competitive virus emerges.

According to the latest statement by ECDC: “The emergence of significantly more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants such as the B.1.617.2 (Delta) is causing an upsurge of COVID-19 cases in several EU/EEA countries. This is likely to continue until a larger proportion of the general population is fully vaccinated unless more stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are implemented. (ANI)

Recently, the Spanish government had announced that travellers from Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia and Namibia will have to spend 10 days in quarantine following their arrival in the country.

The decision was published in the Spanish Official State Bulletin (BOE) on Saturday, which said the measure will come into effect from July 27 as a result of the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the four countries.

The 10-day quarantine may end earlier if the travellers get a negative Covid-19 test result on the seventh day after their arrival.

Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia and Namibia thus join a list of over 25 countries from outside the European Union that are considered to be high risk. Travellers from these countries have to spend time in quarantine after arriving in Spain. The Spanish Health Ministry said last week that the ban on arrivals from Brazil and South Africa, which was imposed earlier in the year, will remain in place until at least August 3.

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