Rupak Kumar

Abstract

Since one and half years, the pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 virus (disease caused is Covid-19) has ruined the entire humanity in unimaginable ways, whether it is economy or unemployment or children mental health disorder or large number of deaths. There is no country in the world which is not affected by this virus. In some countries, this pandemic is coming in the form of outbreak such as first wave of pandemic then after some gap period, second wave of pandemic. In country like India, the second wave of corona pandemic has crippled the economy, public health safety and at the same time put a big question on the health infrastructure of entire nation whether it is availability of oxygen cylinders, or testing facility, hospital bed or ventilators. The actual number of patients who can get affected had not been estimated correctly. This poses more problems due to asymptomatic nature of the expression of COVID-19 on individual basis. Tragically, for developing countries like India with high population density, the situation has been more complex. Additionally, more amount of waste from the Covid affected population goes to effluent water, waste water coming out of residential area, hospitals, isolation centres and so on. In this review article, we have focused on presence of corona virus and infection transmission through effluent water in country like India with huge number of population and also provide further scope in research to inform future studies.   Keywords : SARS- CoV-2, COVID- 19, Waste water, Sewage, Developing countries.

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Abstract

Corona virus infection is a worldwide health threat that has infected a substantial portion of the world’s population and is caused by SARS-CoV-2. It is the natural tendency of a virus to change the genetic makeup through point mutation, and such viruses are called variant of the original virus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus also undergoes such mutation (maybe one or more and distinct from other) over time and many genetically diverse variant has risen. Such variants might be variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI) based on the differences in virulence, transmissibility, pathogenicity, and vaccination efficacy. Omicron, a new VOC of SARS-CoV-2, has recently emerged as global distress to more than 115 countries. The article provides a summary of the evolutionary, biological, and genomic aspects of different SARS-CoV-2 VOC with respect to Omicron and found that amino acid mutation in spike proteins such as A67V, ?69-70, Q954H, N969K, L981F etc and other structural protein mutations such as D3G, Q19E, A63T in membrane protein, T9I in envelope protein and P13L, ?31-33, R203K, G204R in nucleocapsid protein results major differences between different VOC/VOI of SARS-CoV-2. Further, the effectiveness of the widely used SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has been reviewed specific to Omicron. The existing available Covid-19 vaccines developed and manufactured by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Novavax show reduced efficacy against the latest VOC of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron. Based on the available literature of preliminary findings, people who get a booster shot or a third vaccine dosage may have better protected against Omicron.   Keywords: SARS- CoV- 2, Omicron, Variants of concern, Variants of interest, Mutation, Vaccine.

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