Insacog to meet as Covid cases rise in Europe

As Covid-19 cases rise in several European countries, the network of laboratories set up to monitor genomic variations of the coronavirus in India will hold a meeting on Thursday.

Though India has not seen any significant increase in the number of Covid-19 cases or hospitalisation so far, the laboratory consortium, Insacog, will review the situation and discuss the roadmap ahead.

"Situation in India has been under control for a long time now but the need to keep investigating and keeping a strict vigil still exists," a member said.


Some countries like France, meanwhile, have launched a new vaccination campaign against Covid-19, urging vulnerable people to get another booster jab with the vaccines updated to tackle the latest circulating variants.

Covid cases are rising in over half of European countries, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. There has been a surge in hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths in some nations.

Anurag Agrawal, Insacog's former head and chair of the World Health Organization's technical advisory group on virus evolution, said he doesn't think there is an urgent public health need for a new round of vaccination in India.

So far, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog) has not found anything "unusual", a member of the network said. According to the same member, XBB continues to be the dominant sub-lineage circulating in the country.