India may be entering endemic stage – Souma Swaminathan. Image Courtesy – Livemint
India may be entering the endemic stage and the people of India have to live with the virus. Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, expressed concern over the movement and situation with the virus in India.
What is the definition of endemic?
Endemic is a permanent regional disease. At this stage, the lethal energy of the virus is much less. The rate of infection also becomes nominal. But, the disease is not completely eradicated. At the endemic stage, people in a particular area become accustomed to a deadly virus. The disease prevails like a normal disease, and at the same time normal daily life goes on.
Replying to a journalist’s question, Soumya Swaminathan said that the population of India has different immunity in different parts of the country. So Coronavirus is entering a stage where the disease will last. People have to move forward with the virus. It will not be eradicated. Sometimes the incidence of the infection will increase somewhere, and it will decrease again somewhere, it will go on like this. According to the WHO scientists, the people of India have developed resistance against COVID-19.
At least 80% of the country’s people will be vaccinated by the end of 2022, Saumya Swaminathan hopes. And then she thinks that the situation will become much more normal.
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Meanwhile, the third wave of COVID-19 may come in September. A lot of preparations have already been started. The government and the administration have repeatedly warned that Coronavirus should not be taken lightly. It is also believed that there is a risk of harm to the children in the third wave. Swaminathan also assured that there is no need to panic right now.
The scientist said in an interview with a journalist that with the size of India and heterogeneity of population, the status of immunity has been different in various parts of the country. That is the reason for the infection due to COVID-19 would continue with ups and downs in various parts of the nation. She also told that some kind of endemicity would be found in India where there would be low to moderate levels of transmission of the COVID virus. She told that the WHO was not expecting any more rapid growth and peaks what happened a few months ago.
On the issue of COVAXIN clearance, she was very much confident that the technical group of the World Health Organization would give clearance by mid of September as one of their authorized vaccines.
