Indian Media Needs to Stop BF.7 Propaganda
Firstly How Did They Stumble Upon BF.7 strain?
While China was under Covid19 restrictions, A team of researchers sequenced a lot of Covid19 samples collected in December from Nanjing in Jiangsu province and released the dataset of a dozen or so sequences to all international databases. They also released in lots of sequences of samples collected in November, but let's not get into that.
All serious Scientists can view those sequences at NCBI's Covid19 data portal if the look for following submitter Information.
(Submitters' Institutional Affiliation)Jiangsu International Travel Health Care Center, Nanjing Customs Port Outpatient Department
So these cases might not even be Nanjing's own, might be of sailors/boatmen tested as per protocol in November & December there.
However, Indian Media's understanding and political classes' intelligence is so low, they didn't even the dataset .
PANGO lineage (Strain) wise breakup shows ..
BN.1.3 accounted for most : 4
Followed By BF.5 : 2
BF.7 had only TWO samples ( NCBI Accession Number OQ048284 and OQ048289)
1 case of recombinant XBB.1 and one case of BN.1.1.1 , BQ.1.1.13, BQ.1.1, BQ.1.2
So sublineages of BQ.1 amount to 3 cases.
Who told them that BF.7 is causing the superspread? Why are "Indian scientists" disregarding XBB.1 now? BN.1.3 clearly is faster spreading worldwide and twice more prevalent in (Dr) Geng's dataset? BF.5 is as much prevalent in that dataset as BF.7, why disregard that?
Politicians and TV Anchors look stupid when talk about BF.7
Unfortunately I saw a glimpse of Adani-NDTV today, in which, Ankit Tyagi was talking to West Bengal Health Minister, Dr. Shashi Panja. And she was saying the same stupid things,
BF.7 came from China (absolutely false).
BF.7 cases jumped from 2 to 5 in one day (Completely Untrue).
I think she is MBBS Doctor and not a doctor of Virology.. it was stupid of NDTV to voice her opinion as Expert Opinion.
Fact is neither Ankit nor Shashi Panja Know, there is no BF.7 detection kit.
Samples need to collected, sequencing machines which were idle for months need to recalibrated with a trial run. Then Covid sample assays to prepared and they had to be sequenced. The whole genome has to be sequenced and end product will be a set Files, each carrying one sample's unique sequence.
Then these files will be fed to "Pangolin" software, which will give PANGO lineages of every sample provided there were no sequencing error or new lineages. These exceptions are marked "Unclassified" and to virologists, they are most valuable.
It is not X-ray of broken leg, Madam Doctor that you can say by a look at the plate, "Yes, this is a case of broken bone". And Ankit, it is also not Election result, you can't do "Early trends" in sequencing.. "bhaisaab, pehle 500 DNA dekh ke batao na" (bro, please tell from first 500 DNA base pair).. that sort of thing is also not done.
In conclusion, free tutorial for Journalists and Politicians and interested people:
You must ask following questions, every time some official shoots his mouth of any lineage detection:
When and where the samples were collected?
Which sequencing machine was used?
(As in a sequencing run, nobody runs for a single patient) How many samples were sequenced?
If they say 1 or 2 samples of any particular strain (say BF.7 in this case) were present, which would mean 19-199 samples were of other strains . If there are Unclassified samples, that might be a bigger healthcare worry.
India has not updated "RTPCR testing Kits" for over a year. India had stopped "Genome Surveillance of Covid19 strains" for most part of 2022. Now saying "We will Genome sequence" for all Covid Positive cases, simply won't work.
Because Virus mutates continuously and after leaving its track, you cannot rejoin the race at your convenience. The way forward is to Genome Sequence all Covid like cases, even if tested negative for Covid after checking they are not "influenza" through RTPCR tests for Flu. This is how you detect "New Strains" or "New Virus".
And for that, India need to cut down RTPCR test costs.. right now, it is not affordable for 90% indians.
All these hoopla, however, looks like heading towards "4th Vaccine shot" in India, when under current "protocol" people are supposed to be taking their 3rd and thankfully rejecting them.
Masks however are good protection, both against Toxic pollutants and disease spreading aerosols. Wear them outside, as much as possible, Clean, Washable Masks.
No comments:
Post a Comment