Two Covid deaths in Andhra, eight cases: Is this a cause for concern?

The next fatality was, on July 7, that of a 46-year-old man admitted to the Government General Hospital in Kadapa. The patient, who was admitted with acute breathlessness and persistent cough, succumbed to severe bilateral lung damage and pneumonia. Extensive lung damage consistent with Covid-19 was detected when he underwent a chest CT scan.

What measures has the state taken?

In response to the sudden occurrence of this cluster, the state’s health department has initiated contact tracing and testing measures. “Five cases were identified in Kadapa and the rest three were their contacts. We are monitoring the situation closely and there is no need to panic as this is a sporadic case,” Andhra Pradesh Health Secretary S Suresh Kumar told The Indian Express. He said that this was “not an outbreak” and that surveillance and contact tracing measures are already in place.

Medical practitioners, however, are concerned whether this sudden occurrence of cases was caused by a more virulent strain of the Omicron subvariant.

“Because there was rapid development of respiratory distress among patients, it is suspected that the current spike could be caused by an aggressive Omicron subvariant,” a doctor associated with the District Medical Office in Kadapa told The Indian Express.

Is this a matter of concern?

The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is considered to be highly contagious and spreads at a rapid pace even in the lungs. Healthcare systems in the country were overwhelmed at first by the spread of the Omicron variant. Children were also affected by the Omicron wave, unlike the previous Delta wave. However, Omicron infections have generally caused less severe disease on average than earlier variants owing to increased population immunity.

“The concern is that the variant could quickly spread through the population and put stress on the healthcare mechanism,” a government doctor said. The state, however, is not expecting this. Health Secretary Kumar said: “In the past six days, no new cases have been reported. So we believe that this was just a sporadic incident”.

The state government has sent throat and nasal swabs of the affected people, including those who died, to Pune’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) for genome sequencing. “The results of this are awaited. We expect this to come within the next couple of days,” Kumar said.

A committee of five specialists have also ruled out the possibility of a new subvariant, Kumar said.

What can be done now?

The basic effort of the state government is to “wait and watch”, top officials said. Meanwhile, the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, where the first Andhra patient died, in a statement said that “there was no evidence of a high-severity strain circulating in the state and that case numbers remain lower than in previous years”.

The Tamil Nadu government said the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine is monitoring the situation. The NIV has found that the currently circulating strain causes only mild illness, it said. However, elderly persons, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions, and those with low immunity have been advised to continue taking precautions.