Amid the rising cases of the new variant of coronavirus, there have been concerns regarding its spread and effect but while all this taking place there is good news shared by a senior epidemiologist at AIIMS in New Delhi on Sunday. He said, COVID-19 pandemic is gradually descending into the ‘endemic’ stage.
Speaking to ANI, Dr. Sanjay Rai proclaimed that on observing the rate of vaccination and natural infection, it can be predicted that “a majority of us will be getting infected. According to the medical studies being conducted, Dr. Rai remarked that people who have contracted the virus are “most-protected.”
“Looking at the COVID-19 vaccination status and the natural infection, we can say that very soon, the majority of us will be getting an infection. And then this virus will convert into an endemic virus,” Senior epidemiologist at AIIMS, Dr. Sanjay Rai, was quoted as saying by ANI.
Endemic is a stage where the cases are clustered to a particular geographical location and the infections are present all across but in significantly declining numbers. Dr. Rai while explaining the tendency of the virus, also noted that SARS-CoV-2, commonly known as COVID-19, is an RNA virus, i.e. it has ribonucleic acid as its genetic material and has “mutated thousands of times.”
However, “the variants of concern are only five – alpha, beta, gamma, delta and current Omicron, which is a very fast transmitting disease. So very fast transmission is taking place all over the world,” the senior AIIMS epidemiologist stated.
When asked if immunity against the virus will be impacted with the movement into the endemic stage, Dr. Rai elaborated, “The overall severity is less so the majority of us will get this infection.” He also referred to detailed reviews and claimed that those who have contracted the novel virus incline to develop the most natural kind of immunity.
Dr. Rai said, “Based on the current scientific evidence, we can say those who recovered from the COVID they are best-protected person as of now then the second-best person is those who have the vaccination.”
However, India has administered over 162 crore vaccinations against coronavirus, 68.1 crores who are fully vaccinated.
The highly-transmissible Omicron variant has mostly impacted metropolitan areas like Delhi, Mumbai due to the density of population. In rural areas and the eastern part of India, the progression of the virus is quite slow, said the epidemiologist. His statement came after the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), on Sunday released a bulletin saying
“Omicron variant of COVID-19 is in community transmission stage in India and has become exponentially dominant in multiple metros” where fresh infections are rising rapidly. India recorded 3,06,064 new Covid-19 cases and 439 related deaths in the last 24 hours ending 8 am, Monday. While the daily cases have dropped from that of Sunday’s (over 3.33 lakh cases), the positivity rate climbed to 20.75 per cent. According to the Union Ministry of Health, India’s active caseload currently stands at 22,49,335.
