COVID: India's active caseload is 3,609
On December 30, 2022 as per the data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India's active COVID caseload is 3,609. The recovery rate is 98.8% with 185 recoveries in the last 24 hours.
A total of 243 new COVID cases have been recorded so far.
A total of 81,907 vaccine doses have been administered in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry data reveals.
XBB is the dominant coronavirus strain in India
In an official statement made in November, the INSACOG, the forum set by the health ministry to study and monitor the genome sequencing of coronavirus, said that XBB is currently the dominant strain of the COVID causing coronavirus in the country.
XBB and its sublineages account for 56% of the COVID cases in the country.
What are the symptoms associated with XBB-COVID infection?
From the data available, it is clear that XBB does not have any trademark symptoms of its own. The signs and symptoms of this disease are similar to those seen in earlier variants.
"Modest increase in the spread of XBB in Singapore has been observed. However, there has been no report of increase in severity of disease or increase in hospitalization associated with these variants. Among the Indian patients the disease is mild like with other Omicron sub-lineages and no increase in severity is noted," the INSACOG had said in an official statement.
The common symptoms of COVID are runny nose, sore throat, fever and headache.
BA.2.75 variant is second most prevalent variant of COVID in the country
In the same statement, made in November the INSACOG had made it clear that XBB has overtaken BA.2.75 sub variant of the Omicron which now accounts for 44% of the infections.
The BA.2.75 sub variant remained one of the most circulating COVID variants for five months starting from July.
The XBB is a recombination of BA.2.75 and BJ.1.
What are the symptoms associated with the BA.2.75 variant?
Clinical severity was not seen during the time when BA.2.75 was in circulation though health experts saw its potential to rapidly spread within the population.
The common symptoms seen during the BA.2.75 induced COVID infection were cough, cold, fever, congested nose, sore throat and fatigue.
Omicron remained the dominant strain in the entire world in 2022
"Omicron is currently the dominant variant circulating globally, accounting for >98% of viral sequences shared on GISAID after February 2022," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement on November 29, 2022.
"In light of the widespread transmission of the Omicron VOC across the globe and the subsequent expected increased viral diversity, WHO has added a new category to its variant tracking system, termed “Omicron subvariants under monitoring" to signal to public health authorities globally, which VOC lineages may require prioritized attention and monitoring," the global health agency has said.
Omicron has remained the dominant strain this year. The virus has mutated several times and so far only its sub variants have been detected.
Omicron sub variants found in India
Apart from XBB and BA.2.75 several other sub variants of the Omicron have been found in India.
Recently, the BF.7 variant, which is responsible for the spike in COVID cases in China, was found in India. Four such cases were reported but no clinically specific symptoms were seen.
In October, BQ.1 was found in the country.
During January-February, the BA.2 sub variant of Omicron was found in 80% of the cases in the country.
The devastating Delta variant
India witnessed the worst COVID wave in March-June 2021 when the Delta variant emerged. Considered to be one of the worst waves of the COVID so far, the Delta wave paralysed the hospital and health care system of the country.
The Delta variant or the B.1.617.2 was identified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 11, 2021.