‘Comparing Omicron to Delta, reports of severity of disease is not seen anywhere’

Bengaluru:  Five contacts of a doctor in Bengaluru infected by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have no symptoms of the disease and this shows theimportance of vaccinations, Health Minister  Dr. K. Sudhakar said yesterday.

Three primary contacts — immediate family members of the doctor — and two secondary contacts who tested positive have been in isolation and under observation at a Government facility over the past week.

They are suspected to have contracted the infection from the doctor who tested positive on Nov. 22 — despite having no travel history. The doctor, a resident of Bengaluru, was found on Dec. 2 to have been infected with Omicron, following genomic sequencing of his samples.

The genomic sequencing reports for the five contacts of the doctor are yet to be provided to the Health Department, the Minister said. “There are no symptoms in the contacts of the person infected with the new variant. They are not facing any complications or severity (of the disease). They are admitted to the Bowring Hospital and I am in touch with the Director of the Hospital,” the Minister said.

“The mild nature of infection in the contacts may be because they are fully vaccinated. This                                                                       is the reason why we believe there will not be severity in those who are vaccinated. This is why we are asking people to complete two doses of vaccination,” Dr. Sudhakar said.

“We do not have to be too concerned with this variant. We handled the Delta variant which had a higher level of severity. If we compare Omicron to Delta, then we are not seeing reports of severity of disease anywhere in the world. The only concern is the rapid transmissibility of the variant and to prevent this we need people to be vaccinated,” he said.

“In any pandemic, if you look at history, it is the second wave that is the most severe. The third wave is usually of less intensity than the second wave. This is the historical evidence for pandemics. Even if there is a third or fourth wave it may be less severe and then it dies out,” he said.

“Children were not badly affected by the second wave when the Delta variant was predominant. The sense now is that this variant will not affect children either. This is what scientists are saying,” Dr. Sudhakar said.