Experts suggest XBB.1 descendent – XBB.1.16 could be behind the recent surge in Covid-19 cases in the country. The highest number of this sublineage’s sequences have come from India (48), followed by Brunei (22), the United States (15) and Singapore (14), Times of India reported.
The daily number of Covid cases in India was recorded above 600 after 117 days, while the active cases increased to 4,197, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday. A total of 618 new coronavirus cases were reported in a span of 24 hours while the death toll climbed to 5,30,789 with five deaths.
“In India, XBB.1.16 is showing a high prevalence in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, as per covSPECTRUM. XBB.1.16 has not descended from XBB.1.5, but both have descended from the recombinant ancestor XBB and more recently XBB.1. XBB is currently dominating in India, and the latest uptick in cases in the country could be a result of XBB.1.16 and perhaps XBB.1.5, but a few more sample runs would clear the picture,” TOI quoted a top expert from India’s genome sequencing network as saying.
The expert said most strains isolated from Indian travellers to Singapore, the US and Brunei recently have been XBB.1.16. “So, this subvariant could be driving the ongoing spike in cases in India. It is also possible that XBB.1.16 may have originated in India,” said the expert who also warned that XBB.1.16 could eventually dominate all other SARS-CoV-2 circulating variants.
India currently has 48 sequenced samples of this sublineage, as per covSPECTRUM, a platform that accesses GISAID data and helps scientists identify variants of SARS-CoV-2. The platform highlighted that as many as 39 sequenced samples of the sublineage are from Maharashtra, eight are from Gujarat and one from Uttar Pradesh.
Dr Vipin M Vashishtha, the member of WHO’s Vaccine Safety Net who has been tracking new Covid variants, said the previous XBB.1 descendant, XBB.1.5, had become dominant across the globe but not in India. “But there is some worry about XBB.1.16 globally because it has certain mutations in the non-spike region of the virus: two ORF9b mutations. ORF9b has been implicated in efficient immune evasion.”
Infectious diseases expert Dr Sanjay Pujari, a member of India’s national Covid-19 task force, said, “Not much information is yet available on XBB.1.16’s relative immune escape properties and ability to cause severe illness as compared to other Omicron sub-lineages.”
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