Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and Infection (Dec 2022)

Delta variant SARS-CoV-2 infections in pediatric cases during the second wave in India

  • Pragya D. Yadav,
  • Gunjan Kumar,
  • Aparna Mukherjee,
  • Dimpal A. Nyayanit,
  • Anita M. Shete,
  • Rima R. Sahay,
  • Abhinendra Kumar,
  • Triparna Majumdar,
  • Savita Patil,
  • Priyanka Pandit,
  • Yash Joshi,
  • Manisha Dudhmal,
  • Samiran Panda,
  • Lokesh Kumar Sharma,
  • Kala Yadav Ml,
  • Jayanthi Shastri,
  • Mayank Gangwar,
  • Ashok Munivenkattapa,
  • Varsha Potdar,
  • K. Nagamani,
  • Kapil Goyal,
  • Ravisekhar Gadepalli,
  • Maria Thomas,
  • Suruchi Shukla,
  • P. Nagraj,
  • Vivek Gupta,
  • Gaurav Dalela,
  • Nawaz Umar,
  • Sweety M. Patel

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 55, no. 6
pp. 1060 – 1068

Abstract

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Background: During October 2020, Delta variant was detected for the first time in India and rampantly spread across the globe. It also led to second wave of pandemic in India which affected millions of people. However, there is limited information pertaining to the SARS-CoV-2 strain infecting the children in India. Methods: Here, we assessed the SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating in the pediatric population of India during the second wave of the pandemic. Clinical and demographic details linked with the nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs (NPS/OPS) collected from SARS-CoV-2 cases (n = 583) aged 0–18 year and tested positive by real-time RT-PCR were retrieved from March to June 2021. Results: Symptoms were reported among 37.2% of patients and 14.8% reported to be hospitalized. The E gene CT value had significant statistical difference at the point of sample collection when compared to that observed in the sequencing laboratory. Out of these 512 sequences 372 were VOCs, 51 were VOIs. Most common lineages observed were Delta, followed by Kappa, Alpha and B.1.36, seen in 65.82%, 9.96%, 6.83% and 4.68%, respectively in the study population. Conclusion: Overall, it was observed that Delta strain was the leading cause of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Indian children during the second wave of the pandemic. We emphasize on the need of continuous genomic surveillance in SARS-CoV-2 infection even amongst children.

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