Amresh Kumar Singh¹, Sushil Kumar²*, Suraj Prasad², Indra P Adhikari³, Vivek Gaur¹, Ankur Kumar¹, Rajkishore Singh⁴ and Ganesh Kumar⁵

¹Department of Microbiology, Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

*Corresponding Author: Sushil Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Zoology, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Received: June 02, 2022; Published: June 27, 2022

Prognosis of a COVID-19 caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is determined by how the host and virus variant interact with each other. The second wave was spreading at a breakneck pace in India, eventually and became a "tsunami by spreading of delta (B.1.617.2) variant. To determine the cause of this condition, randomly chosen positive SARS-CoV-2 samples were sequenced for the detection of variants responsible for this miserable situation. We have found mainly delta variants in clinical samples. Surprisingly, first time two delta plus (AY.1) and one kappa (B.1.617.1) variants of SARS-CoV-2 were also reported on July 2, 2021 from our centre of Uttar Pradesh. Unfortunately, among these, two non-vaccinated cases, person infected with delta plus and another with kappa variants had loss of their life admitted in ICU COVID-19 ward with severe conditions. Remaining, one case infected with delta plus was recovered who had already taken the vaccination of both doses. This finding suggests that SARS-CoV-2 genome variations have a substantial influence on COVID-19 outcome, resulting in an increase in reproduction number (R0) in the second wave. However, our findings point to a possible role for vaccination against the more lethal double-mutated delta plus variant. This primary report also opens a door towards large-scale gene sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 samples in order to develop precautionary measures against subsequent waves.

Keywords:SARS-CoV-2; Delta Plus Variant; Kappa Variant; Sequencing; COVID-19

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Citation

Citation: Sushil Kumar., et al. “Emergence of Delta Plus (AY.1) and Kappa (B.1.617.1) Variants of SARS-CoV-2 in Second Wave of India: A Case Series from Eastern Uttar Pradesh". Acta Scientific Microbiology 5.7 (2022): 95-101.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Sushil Kumar., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.