New Delhi: There is a steady rise in coronavirus infections in India.
On Thursday, active cases stood at 7,154 in the country, as per data from Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, with nearly 50 per cent of the positive cases reported from Kerala.
According to health officials, the rise is being attributed to the highly transmissible variants such as JN.1, NB.1.8.1 and LF.7.
Among these, NB.1.8.1 – also being referred to as Nimbus — is causing a sore throat that many have described as feeling like ‘razor blades’.
Unlike subtle sore throat, cough and cold, or loss of smell, Nimbus hits the throat hard.
Nimbus has been seen to slip past one’s immune defences.
According to a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, this variant combines high ACE2 receptor affinity with the ability to evade antibodies.
While Nimbus is the up-and-coming variant, India has also reported hundreds of cases of another new variant, XFG.
According to experts, XFG is a recombinant subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and is formed by the mixing of two earlier variants, first detected in Canada.
Recombinant variants emerge when a person is infected with two different strains of the virus simultaneously, and the virus ‘mixes and matches’ its genetic material.
There is no evidence that XFG can lead to severe illness or cause higher mortality compared to other Omicron sub-variants. It is associated with mild upper respiratory symptoms in most vaccinated or previously infected individuals.
