Amid China Covid spike, BF.7 variant may not have drastic impact on India: Expert reveals why

As China is experiencing a major spike in the number of Covid cases for the last few days, experts have detected that the explosive new Covid wave has been caused by the BF.7 strain of the Omicron variant in the country, raising concerns for India as well.

Although the Centre has issued several important guidelines for states and Union Territories, experts in India have said that the BF.7 strain of the Covid virus will not have the same type of implications as the Delta or Omicron variants, and there is no need to panic.

The severity of the BF.7 variant of coronavirus in India may not be as serious as it is currently prevailing in China as India has already developed "herd immunity" a top official of CSIR- Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) here said.

Vinay K Nandicoori, Director CCMB, stressing the need to follow Covid appropriate behaviour, said there is always a concern that all these variants have the ability to escape the immunity and can infect people who are vaccinated and even sometimes infected with the previous variants of Omicron.

"The severity of the infection is not as much as it used to be with Delta. That's because of the fact that we do have herd immunity to an extent. Actually, we have herd immunity because we are exposed to the other viruses," he told PTI.

As per media reports, currently, India has recorded four cases of the BF.7 variant of the coronavirus. It must be noted that the BF7 variant has an incredibly high transmissibility rate, and one infected person can pass on the virus to 18 more people.

The health expert further said, “We (India) have seen the Delta wave which is a big one. Then we got the vaccination done. And then the Omicron wave came and we continued booster doses. We are different in many ways. What is happening in China may not happen in India because of that.”

Earlier, the Centre had asked people to wear masks in crowded places and exercise caution when it comes to the festive season, especially during Christmas and New Year celebrations. People have also been urged to take their booster vaccine doses to protect themselves from coronavirus.

(With PTI inputs)

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