Data Shows That The Third Wave Has Ended In India
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2022-03-07 06:14:57
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
The Omicron-driven third wave of coronavirus infections has, for all effective purposes, ended in India. The weekly case numbers are declining fast - every week is showing a 50% decline from the previous week for the last four weeks. The number of cases in the week ending March 6 stood at less than 43000 which was the lowest in 22 months. The positivity rate has also gone down and the recovery rate is very high. No state, or even district, has shown an upsurge week-on-week. All this points to the fact that new infections are not happening at a rate high enough to be alarming and there is no further and immediate threat of community transmission.
It was known that Omicron was a milder variant and was not life-threatening. Yet, given the speed with which it infected communities, there was a huge risk of it infecting a huge number of people in a short time to cause panic and overwhelm the health infrastructure. But nothing of that kind happened in India. By the time the Omicron wave started to spread, India had fully vaccinated more than 80% of its frontline workers with both the doses, more that 90% of its adult population with at least a single dose and nearly 64% of its adult population was fully vaccinated. Although Omicron was known to have penetrated the vaccine shield in many cases, vaccination still proved to be our savior. People did have mild symptoms and many chose not to test but isolate themselves for 5/7 days to recover. There was no panic and there was also no undue load on the health system.
While there is a chance of another variant emerging, as WHO has warned, vaccination remains our best shield against serious infection. India must continue to work to achieve 100% vaccination of the adult population and must now speed up the vaccination process for 12-18 year age group. Within the next few months, everyone in India above 12 years of age must ideally be fully vaccinated. The government must also study the need for giving the booster dose to all adults. People must also be prodded to wear masks in public and crowd discipline must also be maintained for some more time as a precautionary measure.
