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“India needs to make sure it is getting the vaccines to every eligible citizen as soon as possible, and perhaps should consider reducing the gap in Covishield to at least 12 weeks,” says Dr Shahid Jameel.
There is much that is still unknown about Omicron, the newest Sars-CoV-2 variant, that has been designated as a ‘variant of concern’ by the World Health Organisation. The variant was first reported in South Africa on November 24, and has since, spread to over 15 countries or regions, as of now. In response, several countries have begun imposing travel restrictions and closing borders, similar to what we saw happening last year, during the initial waves of the pandemic.
All pandemics will eventually end, how they will end differs. Historically, pandemics end when either the number of cases plummets, and the disease becomes manageable and predictable; or they end when people grow tired of it.
For public health purposes, pandemics become endemic when they stop becoming a burden on health care systems, with small flair-ups that can be managed by healthcare systems.
The Summer Olympics will open in Tokyo on Friday. Originally scheduled to take place from July 24 to August 9, 2020, the Games were postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With the pandemic still continuing and expanding in parts of Asia, the Games will bring together about 11,500 athletes and 79,000 overseas officials, journalists and support staff — and no spectators.
Renowned virologist and former INSACOG chairman Dr. Shahid Jameel said that data from a quickly conducted serosurvey could suggest whether and when a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic may hit the country.
Dr. Shahid Jameel, renowned virologist and former chairman of the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia (INSACOG), and also one of the co-founders of Ignite Life, in an exclusive interview to TNSE says that India needs a quick seroprevalence study to know if there will be a consorted peak or a ripple, or how and when each state may peak.
The latest coronavirus variant has spread to about a dozen countries—including India, the U.S., and the U.K.—while scientists scramble to figure out if the strain is more deadly or transmissible.
A study carried out by the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG) Hospitals in Hyderabad has said that a single dose of Covishield for those who have recovered from the infection is sufficient. The study, which has been published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Infectious Diseases, revealed that those who have been previously infected with COVID-19 demonstrated a higher antibody response to a single dose of the Covishield vaccine compared to those who have not been previously infected.
All models had predicted the peak in early- and mid-May. We can celebrate that the peak has passed, but we cannot deny that we’re still in the middle of a global pandemic. I am cautiously optimistic that the national numbers are truly declining because there is a lot of heterogeneity in Indian states.
India’s Covid curve may be showing early signs of flattening, but, unlike the first wave, the decline in the number of new infections is likely to be much slower this time, according to noted virologist Dr Shahid Jameel.
It is more than a week that India has been reporting around four lakh new coronavirus infections every day. But this week has also been the first time since April that the upward march of the Covid curve has been interrupted. The daily count of cases has moved up and down, unlike in April when every single day, except Mondays, had brought in a higher number of cases.
As the global toll of Covid-19 touches 58 million confirmed infections and almost 1.4 million deaths, events of the past week have infused new optimism about the possibility of using vaccines to control the pandemic.
