The Indian Government’s COVID-19 expert panel had predicted a few days earlier that the much feared Third Wave of the pandemic could start in the month of September or even August 2021 and is likely to peak in October. . The panel sounded an ominous warning that daily cases could reach 4 to 500 thousand (lakh) or more, and accordingly recommended further strengthening of the country’s health infrastructure in terms of ICU beds, ventilator beds and oxygen. There have also been fears that it could infect large numbers of children and some states in India are already working to create more pediatric facilities in hospitals. However, the panel said that data is still lacking to confirm such a fear. Meanwhile, the Comptroller General of Drugs of India (DCGI) had already approved Zydus Cadila’s Zycov-D vaccine, made in India, for emergency use in children over 12 years of age and the vaccination process is likely to start from September 2021. It is a big push for the reopening of secondary schools, but so far no progress has been made to vaccinate children under 12, so the reopening of primary school is pending a uncertainty that has been severely affecting children in rural areas, creating a digital divide in the country.
Although the panel’s warnings are a timely step to encourage people to get vaccinated and strictly follow COVID protocols and also to further strengthen the health sector, it could also be seen as an overly cautious approach in light of what happened. in the disastrous second wave. This affirmation is due to the fact that it is not yet known with certainty if the second wave had actually ended; there are still fluctuations in daily cases in at least six states, including mainly Kerala and Maharashtra, while in the rest of the country the spread has more or less been brought under control. Furthermore, fluctuations in the country’s daily cases have been largely driven by Kerala and Maharashtra, and although the new Delta Plus variant has infected about 60 people in Maharashtra, it is a worrisome variant and its probable spread has yet to be confirmed. , even after extensive investigations of the genome. In fact, these are hopeful trends and it would be the best thing to happen to the pandemic-ravaged country if the third wave is effectively prevented.
In this perspective comes the statement made to the Indian media by World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan that the COVID-19 pandemic in India may have reduced to an endemic as fluctuations in daily cases have been reduced. confined to limited areas only and there has been no exponential increase in infections in the last 2-3 months. However, he cautioned that large portions of the Indian population are still susceptible to infections, with the country’s fully vaccinated people barely reaching 10%, and therefore the vaccination rate must be accelerated immediately. In support of his theory, fluctuations in daily cases have been found to be limited to a few geographic areas only as we already mentioned, and he further said that such fluctuations are likely to continue. Here, we should mention the immunity data that we presented in a previous article where the immensity of the second wave was established in terms of a large number of deaths and infections across the country, not officially supported.
Dr. Swaminathan’s probability theory of endemicity is a kind of mixed news for all of us. The good news is that the third wave may not invade the country as feared, and the disappointing part is that the SARS-Cov-2 virus will never leave us alone. This brings us to the meaning and implications of an endemic. Endemic is a disease that always remains in particular parts of a country, but is mostly predictable in terms of the number of people affected and the specific areas involved. The WHO defines endemicity as “the constant and habitual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area”. There are more than a dozen endemic diseases in India, including malaria, viral hepatitis, chikungunya, chicken pox and rabies, dengue fever, kala-azar, scabies, leprosy, encephalitis, viral fever, cholera and others, some of which can form an epidemic at times. Even diarrhea sometimes becomes an epidemic than an endemic.
There are differences between endemic, epidemic and pandemic: the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) clarifies it this way: “a disease is endemic when its usual presence or prevalence in the population is constant. It is classified as an epidemic. If this epidemic has been recorded in multiple countries and areas, it is called a pandemic.” In case the COVID-19 pandemic has become endemic in India, strategies to control its possible spread within or outside the specified areas and prevent Serious illnesses and deaths must be prepared in advance.As we mentioned earlier, an endemic can turn into an epidemic again and God forbid, considering the highly infectious nature of the Delta variant, it can quickly turn into a pandemic.
Whatever happens in the near future, we must get vaccinated as quickly as possible, the responsibility of which remains with the Government of India, and it is almost conclusively proven that vaccinations can prevent hospitalization and mortality, if not infections or rarely re . – infections; there have also been discussions about giving booster shots to people who were vaccinated more than six months ago around the world; and that we should continue to wear masks, adhere to hand hygiene, and maintain social distancing to the extent possible without despairing for how long. We must accept that the virus will never leave us alone according to scientific data, and we can do nothing but positively hope for the best in the coming months or years.
