Sequencing of 324 Covid samples reveals presence of Omicron variants in community

New Delhi: Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) sentinel sites referred 324 Covid-19 positive samples for sequencing to 22 INSACOG labs between December 29 to January 7, and the results revealed presence of all Omicron variants like BA.2 and its sub-lineages including BA.2.75, XBB (37), BQ.1 & BQ.1.1 (5), etc, in the community, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday.

However, no mortality or rise in transmission were reported in the areas where these variants were detected, it said.

The Union Health Ministry has initiated random testing of international travellers arriving at various airports from December 24. Since then, 13,57,243 international passengers arrived in India on 7,786 flights at various airports out of which 29,113 randomly selected passengers were tested by RT-PCR.

A total of 183 samples were found positive which were subsequently sent for whole genome sequencing to 13 INSACOG labs. Sequencing of 50 samples revealed Omicron and Omicron sub-lineages including recombinant variants. XBB (11), BQ.1.1 (12) and BF7.4.1 (1) were the main variants detected in these samples of international passengers.