Kolkata: ‘BA.5 symptoms abate in 2-3 days’ – Times of India

KOLKATA: Covid samples recently sent for genome sequencing at National Institute of Bio Medical Genomics, Kalyani, mostly reported the BA.5 variant of Omicron along with some BA.4 variant, state health officials said. Individual labs that regularly send samples for sequencing ratified that in about 80%-90% of the samples sent since June, the variant detected had been BA.5.
“The two variants, BA.4 and BA.5, which are causing the current Covid surge in a number of countries, including India, are similar to BA.2. They carry their own unique mutations that may have enhanced their ability to evade some immune responses to previous variants and vaccine-induced immunity, causing breakthrough infections,” said Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhuri, microbiologist at Peerless.
Chaudhuri said high fever, cough, fatigue, congestion or runny nose, which abate in two to three days were prominent symptoms caused by BA.5. “Fall in oxygen saturation and lung involvement are rare The incubation period is also markedly shorter than the previous variants and the virus is getting detected earlier,” he added.
Microbiologist Shelly Sharma Ganguly of AMRI Hospital Salt Lake said, “Combined with natural and vaccine induced immunity, this current surge hopefully should not be causing a massive crisis.”