Unless the testing is not done aggressively many patients who carry the virus within them will keep transmitting the virus. There is no evidence to suggest that the variants are resistant to the current vaccines, but experts do not deny that the effectiveness of these vaccines against the latest strain has come down. Thus the new variants-led infections would necessitates use of multiple tools into play to keep ourselves safeguarded.
Pandemic fatigue among people and the governments, slackness in testing, almost paused vaccination drive and apathy towards flu appropriate protocols have led to a resurge of Covid-19 in India.
India registered a single-day surge of 7,830 new coronavirus infections, the highest in 223 days, and the count of active cases in the country has now increased to 40,215, on Wednesday (April 12). On Thursday, according to Union Health Ministry's latest update, the nation recorded over 10000 new cases and the daily positivity rate jumped to 4.42 percent, while the weekly positivity rate stood at 4.02 percent.
Sprucing up the testing facilities, energising the vaccination drive and making Covid protocols mandatory have to be adopted to arrest the rising Covid trajectory.
While the first two Covid waves in India had a national flavour, the following ones have been granular with some states being affected more than the others.
Vaccination & Testing
As the Covid curve flattened, vaccination took a back seat. Vaccination drive became lax and lost its initial steam. The crowd at vaccination centres thinned down. According to data of the health ministry only 441 doses had been administered in the last 24 hours which is an extremely small number.
The only way to counter this challenge is to open more vaccination points, increase their efficiency, ensure uninterrupted supply and re-design a communication strategy to convince people to take the vaccine. The only way to overcome this is to open more vaccination points, increase their efficiency, ensure uninterrupted supply and most importantly convince people to take the vaccine.
India needs an aggressive, swift and effective testing regimen. Improved testing and transparency around the number of cases are important for arresting the spread of the pandemic.
With the mushrooming of home kits for Covid testing, government and private labs were no longer sought after for a detailed testing. This took a toll on giving correct numbers.
The WHO has already urged all countries to test more people to check the pandemic. India, however, has not worked aggressively in the field of testing.
Low testing, and poor tracing in some states led to under reporting of cases. This allowed the virus to spread and infect a larger group of people.
New variants, new vaccines?
The XBB.1.16, an Omicron subvariant has been contributing to the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in India. A variant occurs when the virus mutates and creates a different version of itself. Variants of viruses occur when there is a change or a mutation to the genes of the virus. Experts have maintained that it is the nature of viruses like coronavirus to evolve and change gradually. With each new variant, the vaccines and the boosters remain the most powerful tool to fight the strains. The Covid-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe illness and even the variants.
Each new variant brings with it several questions—Will the vaccines still work? Does one need something new to keep safe?
A variant of interest is a variant that has genetic traits that predict greater transmissibility and more severe form of disease. A variant of concern has been found to be more infectious, cause more severe disease and evade diagnostic tests.
As long as the coronavirus spreads through the population, mutations will continue to happen, and the delta and omicron variant families continue to evolve. The flip side of the variants is that mutations gives the ability to escape weak immune systems and become more transmissible. This is where the importance of testing comes into play.
Unless the testing is not done aggressively many patients who carry the virus within them will keep transmitting the virus. There is no evidence to suggest that the variants are resistant to the current vaccines, but experts do not deny that the effectiveness of these vaccines against the latest strain has come down.
The new variants are a reminder that we should be using multiple tools into play to keep ourselves safeguarded.
Vaccine shortage
Vaccine development in India has done reasonably well especially on the technology transfer needed for making vaccines – both viral vectors and protein-based ones as well as the inactivated Covaxin. But in terms of developing new candidate vaccines in India, there is still a lot of scope for improvement.
Every time a Covid wave settles down, the supply and production of vaccines becomes slow triggering a kind of shortage in the market.Vaccine shortages can result from a gap in supply and demand, interruptions in production/supply, or a lack of resources to purchase vaccines. Experts feel there should be a more sustainable plan for vaccine production to avoid any shortage havoc. There is an urgent need to build the infrastructure and technical prowess to break the dependency on the global vaccine market. For this the country should carry out continuous research on developing new vaccines. The production of vaccines should not be stopped. Efforts should be made to produce more vaccines that can effectively tackle the new variants.
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
First Published: Apr 14, 2023 11:00 AM IST
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