STEALTH OMNICRON–The new name of danger for the whole world. A new variant named ‘Stealth omicron’ has emerged in China a few days ago and has become a discussion point for the whole world. As we know, the world is getting cured through COVID-19 by giving full vaccination drives to their citizens and young children and trying to bring the old life back on track after COVID-19.
The damage and destruction which has been caused by COVID-19 are still in people’s minds and hearts. It’s hard to forget those scars and damage, which pandemics have done in recent years. Life has been changed for people.
More initiative and concern have been taken by folks on health and sanitisation after the COVID outbreak, as that is what has given them rock bottom in the last few years. They spent millions of dollars then too, and there was no one to help them out.
No one was there to touch them. Even doctors backed up their feet in the first wave, as every life is important. As before COVID, there was a perception prevailing in the minds of people that nothing was going to happen to us as we have a lot of money and a lot of contacts that can come at any time, but this pandemic has destroyed their egos of money and put them to the ground level as no one was there to help them.
Even their family members were standing aside and waiting for improvement. It has proved that we are just creatures of this world.After a year, there is a new fear in people’s minds with the new variant that has been an outbreak in China a few days ago.
It is said that it is the largest outbreak yet to happen after COVID-19 in China. Many people have lost their lives, as reported by media a few days ago.China’s new COVID-19 caseload Tuesday more than doubled from the previous day as it faces by far its biggest outbreak since the early days of the pandemic.
Chinese authorities have tightened anti-virus controls at ports, shut down auto and electronics factories and implemented a “zero tolerance” strategy that aims to keep the virus out of the country. According to experts, this sudden spike in Covid-19 cases is being driven by a sub-variant of Covid-19 being dubbed as ‘Stealth Omicron’.
What is ‘Stealth Omicron’?
A fast-spreading variant known as B.A.2, also dubbed “stealth omicron,” is testing China’s zero-tolerance strategy, which has previously kept the virus at bay after a deadly initial outbreak in early 2020.
The variant is currently under study by researchers at the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), which on Tuesday announced that it is probing the sub-lineage.According to early research, the “stealth omicron” variant has been reported to spread faster than the original omicron, which itself spreads faster than the original virus and other variants, according to early research.
It is to be noted that Omicron drove the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in several parts of the world, including India, where it infected large numbers of people but led to relatively low fatalities as opposed to previous variants like Delta.In a recent study, led by researchers from the University of Tokyo, it was found that similar to the BA.
1, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron appears to largely escape the immunity induced by the COVID-19 vaccines. “Neutralisation experiments show that the vaccine-induced humoral immunity fails to function against BA.2 like BA.1,” the authors of the study said. However, some researchers have found that the BA.2 subvariant might have the ability to cause severe disease.
Where has ‘Steal Omicron’ been reported?
Most of the new cases were in northeast China’s Jilin province, where 2,601 were reported. Smaller outbreaks have broken out around the country, including in the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. According to reports, hospitals have already been built in Jilin province to control the rise in cases.
Why is it called ‘Stealth Omicron’?
According to reports, the new sub-variant does not display some of the key mutations of the COVID-19 virus’s spike protein that make it distinguishable from previous variants in an RT PCR test, meaning that the difference in its spike protein from the existing Omicron and previous variants may
have made it harder to detect initially. According to an evolutionary geneticist and advisor to the Central Virology Laboratory in Israel, the new variant has similarities with the previous Alpha variant, which was once a Variant of Concern. While B.A.2 shares 30 mutations with the other lineage of Omicron. it has 28 traits that are completely new and on its own.
Will there be a fourth wave in India?
Picture credit-google While most countries have already experienced two-three waves of COVID-19, the rising cases of ‘Stealth Omicron’ being reported in China have caused alarm bells across the world. Not just in China, cases of COVID-19 have been shooting up in the United States as well, where a wastewater network that works on COVID-19 numbers and data trends, has warned that cases are rising again.
It is not yet ascertained what variant is causing the surge in parts of the US.In India, the reports of the Chinese rise in cases come nearly two weeks after researchers predicted a peak in the fourth wave of the pandemic in June. According to a modelling study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, the fourth wave of COVID-19 is imminent in India and may start around June 22 and peak from mid-to-late August.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, recently posted on the preprint repository Medric, used a statistical model to make the prediction, finding that the possible new wave would last for four months.The study led by Sabara Parshad Rajesh Bhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh of IIT Kanpur’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics shows that the severity of the fourth wave will depend on the emergence of a possible new coronavirus variant, and vaccination status across the country.
Will the ‘STEALTH OMICRON’ variant have any impact on this assessment?
The Indian researchers noted that there is always a fair chance that a possible new variant of coronavirus may have an intense impact on the whole analysis. The impact will depend on various factors like the variant’s infectibility, fatality, etc, they said.
“Apart from this fact, the effect of vaccinations—first, second, or booster dosage may also play a significant role in the possibility of infection, the degree of infection, and various issues related to the fourth wave,” the authors said. Officials at the World Health Organization recently warned that Omicron may not be the last COVID variant, and the next strain could be more contagious.
Published By : Ankit Singh
Edited By : Khushi Thakur
