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48-yr-old N Kol man season's 2nd death linked to Covid
Kolkata: A 48-year-old north Kolkata resident, who tested positive for Covid-19, died last Friday at a govt hospital. While the state is yet to update this case as a coronavirus-related death, Babulal Singha's death certificate mentions 'Covid-19 with septic shock' as the cause of death.
This is the second Covid death in the city during the current spike, which is likely to have been caused by XFG, a new sub-variant of Omicron.
Bengal on Monday reported 54 fresh cases, taking the total Covid active cases to 747. At least four children are currently under hospital care in the city, including three at Peerless Hospital.
Singha, a resident of Madhab Das Lane off Beadon Street, was admitted to Infectious Diseases and Beliaghata General Hospital on June 4 with Covid symptoms and he tested positive following an RT-PCR test.
The man died the next day at the hospital. Singha's death certificate, a copy of which is with TOI, does not mention any comorbidity but attributes the death to Covid-19 pneumonia and septic shock.
According to the latest findings of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), the XFG variant of the coronavirus has been detected in 163 samples across India, six of which are from Bengal. Health experts said this variant was known to cause only mild infections and hence, there was no reason to panic.
"XFG displays strong immune evasion and may affect previously infected or vaccinated individuals. It is one of the predominant variants causing the present outbreak.
Genose sequencing shows many cases in India," said Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhuri, microbiologist at Peerless Hospital. Associate professor of infectious diseases Yogiraj Ray, too, said this variant was not a worry as far as causing severe infection was concerned.
Among the 163 XFG cases, Maharashtra has logged the highest number with 89 patients, followed by Tamil Nadu (16), Kerala (15), and Gujarat (11). Experts pointed out that the number of samples being sequenced from Bengal and the sample size needed to be increased to confirm the predominant variant. "XFG variant is a subvariant of Omicron, first detected in Canada. Like Omicron, it is expected to cause mild illness in the majority.
But it can cause severe illness in elderly people with severe comorbidities. More information will be available in coming weeks," said infectious diseases specialist Sayan Chakraborty of Manipal Hospital Dhakuria.
The sequencing for Bengal is conducted at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani. Sources said that the samples recently sequenced were from govt hospitals, as there had been no communication to private labs to send the positive samples, though such facilities had also been detecting a good number of positive cases.
