Mumbai records first death due to Delta Plus Covid 19 variant

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Mumbai records first death due to Delta Plus Covid 19 variant (Image: Pixabay)
Mumbai records first death due to Delta Plus Covid 19 variant (Image: Pixabay)

Mumbai : Mumbai has recorded its first death due to Delta Plus Covid-19 variant after a 63-year-old woman succumbed to it in July.

This is the second death by Delta Plus variant in Maharashtra; earlier an 80-year-old woman had passed away from Ratnagiri on June 13.

The death of the Mumbai woman was found to have been caused by Delta Plus variant only on August 11. That is when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) – after being informed by the state health department that a genome sequencing test on some Covid-19 patients had found seven persons carrying the variant in Mumbai – started contacting these patients.

The woman had lost her life on July 27, now two of her family members have also found to be positive with Delta Plus variant.

“The 63-year-old patient passed away after being infected by the Delta Plus variant. We conducted contact tracing of her close contacts, six among whom tested positive for Covid-19. Their samples were sent for whole genome sequencing and two of the contacts were detected with the Delta Plus variant. The results of others are awaited,” said Executive Health Officer Dr Mangala Gomare, who heads BMC’s public health department. This is the first case of Delta plus variant death in Mumbai, Gomare added.

Dr Mahendra Khandade, medical officer (Health) of N ward said, “The deceased was first admitted to Godrej Memorial Hospital in Vikhroli. When her parameters started falling, her family members admitted her to Breach Candy hospital where she died.”

Delta Plus is a mutation of the highly transmissible Delta variant of Sars-CoV-2 (B.1.617.2). Twenty new cases of Delta Plus variant were reported across the state on Wednesday, of which seven were from Mumbai and six each from Pune and Thane. The total count has reached 65.