Four Virus Variants Causing China Surge: Centre’s COVID Panel Chief

New Delhi:  There is no need for panic over the fresh outbreak in China that has rung alarm bells across the world. India is just going through “precautionary and pre-emptive” preparations in absence of a free flow of information from China. It, however, is clear that the China outbreak is due to a cocktail of viruses, which behave differently due to local epidemiology, NK Arora, the chief on the Centre’s COVID panel, told NDTV today

The BF.7, he said, only accounts for 15 per cent of the cases. The majority, 50 per cent, is from the BN and BQ series, and SVV variant is 10-15 per cent. This is where India gains because of “hybrid immunity”, a combination of immunity acquired through vaccines and through rampant infection, from the first, second and third wave of Covid.

“In China they are naive. They have not been exposed to the virus before, and the vaccine they got is probably less effective. I must tell you that most of them received three to four doses,” Arora told NDTV in an exclusive interview adding, “In comparison, 97 per cent of Indians had two doses of vaccines, others contracted the virus more than once. Even the children are safe because at least 96 per cent children below the age of 12 years have been exposed to Covid.”

“So the calibrated manner in which people were exposed even while the vaccination was going on, we see we are a very safe society from a Covid perspective,” he added, saying the response that is taking place in the country now is a “preemptive and pro-active response, primarily because there is huge opacity on the current situation on China. Opacity in terms of the cases, severity of the cases, their vaccination status and then the kind of variants circulating there.”