Maharashtra: Cases of Delta and Delta Plus variants rise, but doctors not worried

With the kickstarting of local trains, Mumbai witnessed a marginal increase in its COVID-19 cases. However, what is of concern is the threat emerging from the Delta and its sub-lineage Delta Plus variants of the virus in the city as well as in the state.

In the past few months, Maharashtra has reported a total of 76 cases of Delta Plus so far, and five deaths have occurred due to the Delta Plus variant, with Ratnagiri reporting two, and Mumbai, Beed and Raigad reporting one each. Of those who succumbed to the variant, almost all were in the senior citizen category and were suffering from comorbid conditions, and two of them had received both the doses of vaccination. " Delta Plus is a mutation of its parent variant Delta and 13 more sub-lineages of the Delta Plus strain have been found of which three - AY 1, AY 2, AY 3 - are currently going around in Maharashtra. But the dominant variant continues to be Delta, a more transmissible variant of the two.

"What we have observed is that Delta Plus is concerning due to immune escape but that has been observed only in a few cases. I think we still need to wait and understand how the situation is likely to unfold in the coming days. As of now, we need to be alert but not worried. Yet, the monitoring must continue with genomic surveillance so that we better understand the virus and the kind of immune response needed to conquer it. Also, with vaccination picking up speed gradually, we expect breakthrough infections to be much less, yet, these must be continuously monitored," said Phullar Desai, a microbiologist from a private pathology lab in Mumbai which is working on genomic samples to monitor COVID-19 variants. However, clinicians and doctors inside Mumbai hospitals who attend to COVID-19 patients on a daily basis aren't worried about the Delta or its sub-variant, saying that the number of Covid cases have gone down considerably.

"If I were to speak from a physician's perspective, I must tell you that COVID-19 is on a complete decline at this moment. Through the past one and a half years I have been attending to Covid patients. As of now we have hardly three to four of them admitted in the hospital. Although Delta and Delta Plus variants hit the city, all patients have recovered well as of now because the treatment which we follow for COVID-19 remains the same, that is aggressive, irrespective of the variant," says Dr Manjusha Agarwal, senior consultant- internal medicine, at Global Hospital in Mumbai's Parel. Although the state has been aggressive in the area of COVID-19 vaccination, a few districts including Pune, Satara, Kolhapur, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Ratnagiri are reporting a high number of daily cases. Many citizens in these districts have also refused to take vaccination against COVID-19. This is also one reason why the total number of COVID-19 cases in the entire state of Maharashtra went up to close to 5,000 on Thursday.

In his annual Independence Day address, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray asked people to stay cautious, warning them that a state-wide lockdown could be imposed if people began taking things lightly and did not follow appropriate COVID-19 rules.  

Doctors are now worried that the cases of Dengue and malaria might far exceed those of COVID-19. "If I get 10 patients with fever, seven of them will be Dengue patients, 2.5 would be malaria patients and only 0.5 would be COVID-19 patients. Presently there is a Dengue menace in Mumbai and this I can say with confidence because we do a Rapid Antigen test and RT-PCR for every patient irrespective of vaccination status," says Dr Agarwal. "Yes, it is absolutely true that we are witnessing a rise in the cases relating to Dengue and malaria, especially in the current monsoon season and we worry that these may actually be more than COVID-19 cases on the ground. Among children, a flu shot will help to keep them immunised and protect them from fever, which could be caused by either Covid or monsoon viruses," says Dr Ramesh Shah from Mumbai.