Chennai: With one case of delta plus variant of COVID-19 being found in Chennai, the public health experts stress on increasing the surveillance and testing as there are risks of increased transmission in variants. Meanwhile, state health department officials say that currently there are no positive cases of delta plus variant in Tamil Nadu.
“Currently, there is no change in the treatment protocol as the medication response is equal to the regular COVID-19 protocol. The vaccines are able to generate immune response against the variant. There are no changes in the testing protocol as the delta plus variant can be arrested in the regular RT-PCR report. However, the monitoring of mutants and variants for any resistance and changes to treatment is necessary. The contact tracing of the person testing positive to the variant is necessary so that all the cases can be reported immediately,” said public health expert Dr K Kolandaisamy.
Read also: Delhi Police did a photo session with murder accused Sushil Kumar
However, experts say that there is a need of increased surveillance and contract-tracing of these cases as these variants are being found to have the potential of faster transmission. Virologist Jacob John says that the mutations can lead to different variants and these can lead to more number of cases of these variants. However, the nature of these variants needs to be studied.
