A 63-year-old woman, infected with the Delta plus variant of Covid-19, died on Thursday. This is the first such death in the city. Officials said the woman was fully vaccinated against the virus. However, she was suffering with some other ailments too. 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 was one of them, and BMC officials were told by her family that she had died on July 27. Now, two of her contacts have also been found infected with the 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. The woman used to suffer from interstitial lung and obstructive airway diseases for which she was being administered oxygen at home. She had taken both her vaccine doses but tested positive on July 21. On July 24, she was shifted to a hospital and passed away three days later.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.”Notably, this is Maharashtra’s second death from the Delta Plus. Earlier on June 13, a 80-year-old woman with comorbidities had succumbed to the infection. The woman hailed from Sangameswar and was admitted to the hospital, over 330 kilometres from Mumbai. The Delta Plus variant of SARS-CoV2 has been detected in over 90 samples in the country so far. The highest number of 65 samples were detected in Maharashtra, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.