oppn parties Serosurvey Results No Reason To Relax

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Serosurvey Results No Reason To Relax

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-07-22 15:08:09

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

Experts are of the opinion that if 70 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, herd immunity will ensure that the risk of Covid-19 diminishes greatly, if not vanishes altogether. Hence, the findings of the fourth serosurvey , conducted by ICMR in June and July, that 68% of Indians have Covid antibodies, point to the fact that another kind of herd immunity is being achieved due to exposure to the virus.

Although this will bring immense relief as rising cases in Kerala, Maharashtra and the North-East, as well as the relaxation of restrictions and consequent indiscipline in following Covid norms are pointing to an imminent onset of the third wave, this does not mean that people can relax and think, like they did after the first wave, that coronavirus has gone.

But the presence of antibodies does not guarantee that there will be no infection. This is because of two reasons - the quality of the antibodies and the mutations of the virus. The virus can still infect a person if the antibodies present in his or her body are small in quantity or not strong enough. In fact, experts have said that using antibody response in coronavirus infections as a sole and durable metric of protective immunity is not right as antibody response is often a poor marker of prior coronavirus infection, particularly in mild infections. Further, when the virus mutates often, as Covid-19 is doing, it is not known how it will react to the antibodies present in the human body. There have been many cases of people getting infected a second time due to the new variants of coronavirus.

Hence, as even ICMR has warned in the report, there is no reason to relax or throw caution to the winds. ICMR has warned particularly against large congregations but it holds true for all outdoor situations. Also ICMR has said that national level serosurvey cannot be a substitute for state or district level serosurvey. People must keep wearing masks and maintain physical distance until the vaccination drive successfully achieves the target. This is also no time to slacken the vaccination drive or relax on the three T's - testing, tracing and treating. Otherwise, the danger of a third wave will always remain. The guard cannot be dropped for the next 6/8 months. 

picture courtesy: ANI