oppn parties The 'End Game' Of The Pandemic Is Not Playing Out, Yet

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
The 'End Game' Of The Pandemic Is Not Playing Out, Yet

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-01-24 16:45:54

About the Author

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

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a timely warning for governments and people not to believe that the pandemic has played out its course and is ending. It has said that in nine weeks it has received reports of 80 million cases worldwide, more than the whole of 2021. It also said that since there were so many cases in such a short period, there are huge chances that more variants might emerge and talks of 'end game' due to Omicron are not justified.

This is a correct assessment. Although India is witnessing a fall in cases now, the very fact that more than 3 lakh cases are being reported daily for the last few days means that community transmission has set in. Community transmission affords the virus a chance to mutate further. In any case, Omicron has numerous spike protein mutations and it has the potential of infecting a large number of people, up to 5/6 times more than Delta and it has not run its course in India. 

Hence, to assume that the high number of infections in Omicron will lead to herd immunity and result in 'end game' for the virus is dangerous, as WHO has warned. It has been seen that the Covid virus mutates and breaks the vaccine shield. Although the repeated infections, especially in those fully vaccinated, are not life threatening, they can still lead to large scale infections and thus put a lot of pressure on the health infrastructure of the country.

It is seen that a kind of virus fatigue is setting in. People have begun to think that since the virus is not being stopped by vaccines and people are getting infected multiple times, there is no way to stop it. Hence, they have begun to lower the guard and are becoming reckless. This is not good. Now is not the time to relax. India is still reporting more than 3 lakh cases daily. If cases have started falling in major cities, they can start to rise again if people do not follow Covid protocols. New variants can emerge if caution is thrown to the winds. The fight against Covid is not over yet.