Tag: covid third wave

  • Youth most affected by Omicron in third Covid wave

    Express News Service

    NEW DELHI: Productive age group of 20-40 years was most affected during the third Covid wave propelled by the Omicron in India, a latest study has said.

    The study on Covid-19 third wave experience in India, in which 5,971 adults were surveyed, found that getting Covid-19 was higher in younger adults, most likely because of greater mobility and mingling.

    The survey conducted by Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman National Indian Medical Association (IMA) Covid-19 task force and its past president; Ramesh Shenoy and Anithadevi TS, said that nearly 45 per cent of people in the age group of 40 years tested positive.

    This was followed by nearly 40 percent of people in the 30 years age group and 31.8 per cent in the 20 years age group.

    Over 21 percent were those who were below ten years.

    “Significantly, over 40 percent of the young people reported symptoms of moderate severity requiring bed rest or hospitalisation for things like IV fluids and pain control,” Dr Jayadevan told this newspaper.

    He said this shows that Omicron is not the “common cold” that many people believe. The study was published in medRxiv, a preprint service for health sciences.

    “Rather, this means a substantial loss of productivity in various strata of society. Thus, a sudden surge in cases could not only overwhelm healthcare establishments but also be bad for the economy in general,” he added.

    With multiple waves from variants, the long term effects of repeated infections, including long Covid, are not fully known. “It is always better to prevent infection to the extent possible through established public health measures like indoor masking and to improve indoor ventilation,” Dr Jayadevan said.

    Dr Darshana Reddy, consultant, Internal Medicine, Altius Hospital, Bangalore, who saw many young people who tested positive during the third wave, agreed with the report findings, saying that thankfully most of the cases were mild, as a result of a successful vaccination drive that had undoubtedly proved useful. 

    “The number of people infected with Omicron was dramatically higher than at any other time in the pandemic. The infection is mild in most individuals, but those who have severe illness still represent a significant number,” Dr Reddy said.

  • India’s Omicron tally at 236, Maharashtra records highest cases of new variant 

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: India has recorded 236 cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus across 16 states and UTs so far out of which 104 people have recovered or migrated, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday, December 23, 2021.

    Maharashtra has recorded the maximum 65 cases of the Omicron variant followed by Delhi at 64, Telangana 24, Karnataka 19, Rajasthan 21 and Kerala 15.

    The ministry data updated at 8 am also showed that India recorded 7,495 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of cases to 3,47,65,976, while the active cases increased to 78,291.

    The death toll has climbed to 4,78,759 with 434 fresh fatalities, the data stated.

    The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been recorded below 15,000 for the last 56 days now.

    The active cases comprise 0.23 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has further improved to 98.40 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.

    An increase of 101 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

    India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16.

    It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

    India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.

  • ‘Hybrid’ immunity, vaccination behind low Covid cases, big third wave unlikely: Experts

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Is the worst of the Covid crisis behind India? As cases dip three weeks after Diwali, the answer is a possible yes, say several experts, attributing the downslide to a large section of the population already exposed to the virus during the second wave and a stepped up vaccination campaign.

    Though there are always imponderables, including the possibility of a new, transmissible variant and the onset of winter in large parts of the country, a third wave as devastating as the second one is unlikely, they said while advising caution and vigilance.

    Covid cases may rise, perhaps across late December-February, but the impact of will be milder than what India experienced in the second wave when thousands died and many thousands more were hospitalised.

    “It may not take off in a coordinated manner across the country, provided no far more transmissible variant comes along,” explained Gautam Menon, professor, Departments of Physics and Biology, Ashoka University, in Sonepat.

    Several epidemiologists had predicted a third wave peaking in October and November because of large gatherings in the festive season, which includes Durga Puja and Diwali.

    But the much feared spike thankfully hasn’t happened.

    On Tuesday, India recorded 7,579 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 543 days, taking the country’s total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,45,26,480, while active cases were the lowest in 536 days, according to Union Health Ministry data.

    The daily rise in new infections has been below 20,000 for 46 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 149 consecutive days.

    “What it suggests is that the impact of the second wave, where a substantial fraction of Indians were infected, continues to manifest itself,” Menon told PTI.

    “In addition, a stepped-up vaccination campaign has meant that more people are protected against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death,” he added.

    In his view, the substantial number of people infected during the second wave from March to July this year is ‘the prime protective feature at the moment for India, while vaccines add to that protection’.

    “A combination of a prior infection with a later vaccination may be even more protective than just the vaccination alone,” said Menon.

    Many scientific studies suggest that people who become naturally infected with Covid and recover before vaccination develop ‘hybrid immunity’, better immunity than those who only have antibodies from vaccination.

    Virologist Anurag Agrawal agreed with Menon, saying the low number of cases can be attributed to a high fraction of the population being infected by the Delta variant during the second wave, followed by most adults having received at least one vaccine dose further boosting the immune response.

    “Serosurveys have shown that the majority of the population is likely to have been infected,” Agrawal, director of the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi, told PTI.

    It is a well-established fact that complete vaccination as well as previous exposure with SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, lead to a significant decrease in the severity of the disease, added immunologist Vineeta Bal.

    Describing the slow decline in nationwide Covid cases as a “good sign”, she also pointed out that northeastern states, especially Mizoram, are still showing a continuing increase in the number of cases.

    “Although the cases started rising in the northeast much later than the rest of the country, this shows that there might be small outbreaks or slow increase in cases in pockets or areas where immunisation has been poor and rate of infections over the past year or so was low,” Bal, from Pune’s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, told PTI.

    “Unfortunately, such granular data is not available nationwide. Hence vigilance needs to continue, search for outbreaks needs to be in place along with necessary isolation and treatment facilities,” she cautioned.

    The increasing number of cases in Europe and North America over the last month has been a matter of concern.

    For the last two years, India seems to have followed Europe in the Covid spike but many scientists feel that may not be the case this time and a third wave even if it does happen will be milder.

    “If there was a spike looming in our future, we should have detected signs of it already,” said Menon.

    According to Sitabhra Sinha, professor of physics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai, India’s “second wave” is the analogue of Europe’s “third wave” and the country may have ‘luckily’ escaped that particular wave.

    “I think the ‘third wave’ already came and went in mid-September. About whether we can expect another wave in the near future, no modeling study can really predict that given a large number of factors and the lack of hard data,” said the scientist.

    Sinha, who has been tracking the reproductive number (R-value) for the country since the beginning of the pandemic, said there has been no post-festival spike at least at the national scale but there was a spike before the season set in.

    R-value is the number of people getting infected by an already infected person on average.

    Currently, Sinha said, only Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir among the states and UTs with over 1,000 active cases have R values that are substantially higher than 1.

    West Bengal has an R-value just higher than 1.

    “However, while the states seem to be doing reasonably well, the major cities are mostly showing increasing trend with Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata all having R over 1,” Sinha told PTI.

    “So while the increase in cases seems to have so far been mostly contained in these urban areas, I would be cautious about how the situation is going to evolve as we go into the cold season,” he added.

    The fourth national serosurvey in July by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) reported that 67.6 per cent of people across India had COVID antibodies, providing them with a level of immunity against the virus.

    According to officials, around 82 per cent of the eligible population in India has received the first dose of the vaccine while around 43 per cent has been fully inoculated.

    According to Bal, the spread of asymptomatic or symptomatic COVID-19 during the second wave was possibly on a much bigger scale in India as compared to Europe.

    “This is apparent from sporadic serosurveys though such generalisation is associated with difficulties. Vaccination coverage, especially that of first dose, has significantly improved,” Bal said.

    “Besides the winter is not that severe, as in Europe, in many parts of the country. Based on this, my prediction is there might be some increase in cases in India in the forthcoming months, but it is unlikely to reach very huge proportions,” she added.

    Agrawal said although the immediate future for the COVID-19 situation in India “looks fine,” the long-term future depends on multiple factors including new variants.

  • Six fully vaccinated persons infected with Delta Plus AY.4.2 variant of coronavirus in MP

    By Online Desk

    INDORE: Six fully vaccinated persons in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district were found infected with the new coronavirus variant Delta Plus AY.4.2.

    “As per the report received from the Delhi-based National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), six persons were found infected with the AY.4.2 variant of coronavirus. Their samples were sent for genome sequencing along with other infected persons in September,” chief medical and health officer (CMHO) BS Saitya said on Monday.

    It is for the first time in the last 19-month history of the pandemic that the AY.4.2 variant was found, he said.

    Saitya said all the six persons who were found to be infected with the AY.4.2 variant were fully vaccinated. They have recovered after treatment, he added.

    ALSO READ | Uncontrolled violation of norms: Covid numbers rising in Bengal post Durga Puja rush

    The CMHO said over 50 people who came in contact with these six persons in the last few days were found to be healthy after testing.

    Meanwhile, Dr Anita Mutha, who heads the microbiology department of the Indore-based Government Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, said AY.4.2 is a new variant of coronavirus and not much information is available about its severity.

    A total of 1,53,202 Covid cases were found in the Indore district so far. Among them, 1,391 have succumbed to the coronavirus infection.

    Indore district remained worst affected in MP when the Covid pandemic raged. However, due to the rapid pace of vaccination, the number of new infections found of late has trickled down to one or two per day.

  • Six fully vaccinated persons infected with coronavirus AY.4 variant in MP

    By Online Desk

    At least six fully vaccinated Covid patients in Indore and its neighborhood in Madhya Pradesh have been found infected for the AY.4 variant – which is the sub-lineage of the Delta variant. The AY.4 is a variant of concern.

    The six patients, the genome sequencing of whose samples revealed that they were infected with the sub-lineage of the Delta variant, include three patients from Indore city and three from Indore district’s Mhow town (all are possibly Army personnel).

    The samples of these asymptomatic patients were sent for genome sequencing to National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC-New Delhi) in September. The reports from NCDC were received last week only. The six patients (all asymptomatic) were aged between 41 and 80 years.

    Confirming that samples of six fully vaccinated patients have been found infected with the AY.4 sub-lineage of Delta variant, the Indore district chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Dr BS Saitya said that so far 50 contacts of these people have been traced.

    All these six people have a travel history of other cities and states, but no international travel history.

    The AY.4 variant was first reported in the country in Maharashtra. One percent of samples from Maharashtra in April had been found positive with the AY.4 sub-lineage of the Delta variant. The same sublineage of the Delta variant was detected in 2% of samples from Maharashtra, whose genome sequencing was done in July. It surged up to 44% in the samples from the western state whose genome sequencing was done in August.

    “As per the report received from the Delhi-based National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), six persons were found infected with the AY.4 variant of coronavirus. Their samples were sent for genome sequencing along with other infected persons in September,” chief medical and health officer (CMHO) BS Saitya said on Monday.

    ALSO READ | Uncontrolled violation of norms: Covid numbers rising in Bengal post Durga Puja rush

    The CMHO said over 50 people who came in contact with these six persons in the last few days were found to be healthy after testing.

    Meanwhile, Dr Anita Mutha, who heads the microbiology department of the Indore-based Government Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, said AY.4 is a new variant of coronavirus and not much information is available about its severity.

    A total of 1,53,202 Covid cases were found in the Indore district so far. Among them, 1,391 have succumbed to the coronavirus infection.

    Indore district remained worst affected in MP when the Covid pandemic raged. However, due to the rapid pace of vaccination, the number of new infections found of late has trickled down to one or two per day.

  • Six fully vaccinated persons infected with coronavirus AY.4 variant in Madhya Pradesh

    By Online Desk

    At least six fully vaccinated Covid patients in Indore and its neighborhood in Madhya Pradesh have been found infected for the AY.4 variant – which is the sub-lineage of the Delta variant. The AY.4 is a variant of concern.

    The six patients, the genome sequencing of whose samples revealed that they were infected with the sub-lineage of the Delta variant, include three patients from Indore city and three from Indore district’s Mhow town (all are possibly Army personnel).

    The samples of these asymptomatic patients were sent for genome sequencing to National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC-New Delhi) in September. The reports from NCDC were received last week only. The six patients (all asymptomatic) were aged between 41 and 80 years.

    Confirming that samples of six fully vaccinated patients have been found infected with the AY.4 sub-lineage of Delta variant, the Indore district chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Dr BS Saitya said that so far 50 contacts of these people have been traced.

    All these six people have a travel history of other cities and states, but no international travel history.

    The AY.4 variant was first reported in the country in Maharashtra. One percent of samples from Maharashtra in April had been found positive with the AY.4 sub-lineage of the Delta variant. The same sublineage of the Delta variant was detected in 2% of samples from Maharashtra, whose genome sequencing was done in July. It surged up to 44% in the samples from the western state whose genome sequencing was done in August.

    “As per the report received from the Delhi-based National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), six persons were found infected with the AY.4 variant of coronavirus. Their samples were sent for genome sequencing along with other infected persons in September,” chief medical and health officer (CMHO) BS Saitya said on Monday.

    ALSO READ | Uncontrolled violation of norms: Covid numbers rising in Bengal post Durga Puja rush

    The CMHO said over 50 people who came in contact with these six persons in the last few days were found to be healthy after testing.

    Meanwhile, Dr Anita Mutha, who heads the microbiology department of the Indore-based Government Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, said AY.4 is a new variant of coronavirus and not much information is available about its severity.

    A total of 1,53,202 Covid cases were found in the Indore district so far. Among them, 1,391 have succumbed to the coronavirus infection.

    Indore district remained worst affected in MP when the Covid pandemic raged. However, due to the rapid pace of vaccination, the number of new infections found of late has trickled down to one or two per day.

  • Covid third wave: Govt prepared to handle 5 lakh cases per day

    By Express News Service

    NEW DELHI: The day saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurate 35 PSA oxygen plants installed in various hospitals across various states, and the government said that it was preparing to deal with 4.5 to 5 lakh Covid cases per day as per forecast of a possible third wave.

    Authorities, however, also clarified that there is no evidence or projection available to suggest that the situation could get that bad, also issuing strong warnings for the next three months that will see many festivals. During the second peak of the Covid19 pandemic in India, the country had reported nearly 4.14 lakh cases in a day before swift decline began. 

    “We don’t have a straight-forward formula to calculate what extent the peak could reach this time after reaching 71 per cent vaccination with the 1st dose and a certain level of natural infection. But the government is preparing for a surge of 4.5 to 5 lakh cases per day,” said V K Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog on Thursday in a Union health ministry briefing. The second wave of the pandemic which caught the country rather unawares in April-May.

  • 35 jawans at Army War College in MP test positive in 3 days

    Express News Service

    BHOPAL: A Covid blast has happened at the Army War College (AWC) in Mhow town of Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district. As many as35 Army personnel tested positive for the killer virus in the last three days.

    While five of them tested positive on Tuesday, 30 others tested positive in a single day on Thursday. According to the daily Covid report released late on Thursday night by the Indore district’s chief medical and health officer (CMHO) office, out of the 8,552 samples tested on Thursday, 32 tested positive, 8,512 tested negative, and the remaining 8 samples were found insufficient for processing.

    Out of the 32 positive samples, 30 were from the Military Hospital in Mhow cantonment town. With this, the number of total active Covid patients in Indore jumped to 53 in just 24 hours. Prior to this, a maximum of 34 samples were tested positive for Covid in the Indore district on June 16.

    As per informed sources, while five Army personnel had tested positive on Tuesday, subsequent testing of their contacts samples led to 30 more junior and senior officers testing positive on Thursday for the killer virus.

    ALSO READ | India reports 31,382 new Covid-19 infections, active cases lowest in 188 days

    Meanwhile, the Indore district CMHO Dr BS Setiya said all the 35 positive patients were asymptomatic and fully vaccinated. All of them are being treated in isolation.

    Informed sources said that the 35 Army personnel, who tested positive in three days, included those who had returned from a training exercise in a north Indian state.

    Based on the contract tracing of the 30 Covid positive Army personnel, 40-50 more samples have been sent for testing on Friday, whose reports are likely by late Friday night.

    A strict lock-down has reportedly been enforced in the AWC following 35 personnel testing Covid positive and entry of all civilians (most of them running commercial establishments inside the campus) has been prohibited till further orders.

    Some events forming part of the ongoing celebrations to mark the golden jubilee of India’s victory over Pakistan and subsequent liberation of Bangladesh in the 1971 war too are likely to be put on hold in the AWC.

    The AWC (originally established as the College of Combat at Mhow in April 1971) is a defence service training and research institution of the Indian Army located in Mhow, which develops and evaluates concepts and doctrines for tactics and logistics for the army. The college trains 1,200 officers of the Army as well as paramilitary forces each year.

  • If no new COVID variant, third wave will not be as devastating as second: Top vaccinologist

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: There will not be a third wave of COVID-19 of the size and consequence the country witnessed during the second wave unless there is a new variant of coronavirus, top vaccinologist Gagandeep Kang said Friday.

    She stressed the need to develop better vaccines that can deal with new variants, and strengthening of the regulatory mechanisms.

    “Unless there is a new variant there will not be a third wave of the size and consequences that we saw in the second wave.

    What we will see is local flare-ups where there are unprotected populations and where the virus has not been before,” Kang said.

    The second wave of coronavirus in the country between March and May killed thousands and infected lakhs, overwhelming the health infrastructure.

    “Are we done with COVID? No we are not. Are we going to be done with COVID? Not anytime in the near future,” she added.

    Kang, a professor with Christian Medical College, Vellore, was speaking in a virtual event at the CII Lifesciences Conclave.

    Last month, Manindra Agrawal, a scientist with IIT-Kanpur who is in the three-member team of experts tasked to project the surge in cases, had said the country may see a third wave peaking between October-November if a more virulent mutant of coronavirus emerges by Septembe Kang said the Indian vaccine industry has been absolutely phenomenal in dealing with the pandemic, but it still has a long way to go.

    “I can’t say the same thing (about the regulatory system) as people know about our regulatory systems.

    But it is something we should use as a lesson for the future because we really really need informed, strong regulators that work with industries to show what is required,” she said.

    Kang also stressed the need for a translational research ecosystem of clinical researchers that are willing to take risk, and are supported by the government and academia.

    She said new technologies carry risks and there is a need for a regulatory system that is prepared for clinical risks.

    “We need the academic medical environments that work with the industry to make sure that we can safely test these interventions in people. We do not have this at this time so strengthening regulation is key.”

    She said surveillance diagnostics is still dependent very heavily on imports.

    The routine PCR kits are being made by many companies in the country but the best laboratories are not yet using those tests, she observed.

    “We have to recognise that we need to be thinking about the quality of what we use so that we use what we make in diagnostics just as we do in vaccines and in drugs and in terms of sequencing,” she said.

    In another seminar during the conclave, Krishna Ella, Chairman & Managing Director of Bharat Biotech said Indian vaccine manufacturers have tremendously contributed globally as two of the three children across the world are jabbed by Indian vaccines.

    He said the Indian industry was more focused on children’s vaccines, and the shift is happening towards adult vaccines.

    “We need clinical trial centers across the country and have partnerships with countries all over the world especially in South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America,” he said.

    “The access to supply chain for reusables, re-agents in biologics and manufacturing is imperative, and it is important that we indigenise a lot of these requirements, so we don’t have any supply chain disruptions,” Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson & Founder Biocon said.

    She added, “The future belongs to biotech, bioscience and biopharma and we need to invest right now. We need to create a conducive environment to provide the necessary risk capital to scale up. This would require specialised venture funds.”

  • COVID-19 third wave could peak between October-November: IIT-Kanpur scientist

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: India may see a third wave of COVID-19 peaking between October and November if a more virulent mutant than the existing ones emerge by September, but its intensity is expected to be much lower than the second wave, a scientist involved in the mathematical modelling of the pandemic said on Monday.

    Manindra Agrawal, an IIT-Kanpur scientist who is part of the three-member team of experts that have been tasked with predicting any surge in infections, said if no new virulent emerges, then the situation is unlikely to change.

    Status Quo is when no new mutant comes and New Variant is when 50% more infectious mutant comes by September. As one can see, the only scenario with some semblance of third wave is New Variant one for epsilon = 1/33. In this scenario, new cases rise to ~1 lakh per day. pic.twitter.com/ECNLGgWjLs
    — Manindra Agrawal (@agrawalmanindra) August 29, 2021
    If the third wave peaks, the country may see only 1 lakh daily cases as against more than 4 lakh when the deadly second wave was at its peak in May. The second wave killed thousands and infected several lakh. “Status Quo is when no new mutant comes and New Variant is when 50% more infectious mutant comes by September. As one can see, the only scenario with some semblance of third wave is New Variant one for epsilon = 1/33. In this scenario, new cases rise to ~1 lakh per day,” Agrawal tweeted.

    Last month, the model suggested that the third wave could peak between October and November and the daily cases could shoot between 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh every day if a more virulent mutant of SARS-CoV2 drive fresh infections.

    However, no mutant that was more infectious than the Delta, which drove the infections during the third wave, emerged. Last week’s forecast was the same, but only the range of daily cases has been brought down to 1-1.5 lakh in the latest one.

    ALSO READ| Gehlot expresses serious concern over rising COVID-19 cases in country

    With the fresh data, the daily infections are further expected to drop in the range of a lakh. Agrawal said the fresh data comprising the vaccinations that have taken place in July and August, the sero-surveys that gave insights about the anti-bodies were factored in while assuming the scenarios.

    According to a study by the researchers of Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the R or the Reproductive value of the coronavirus pandemic was 0.89. It is necessary that the R value is under one that can help arrest the spread of infection.

    Vaccination has been the biggest weapon worldwide to combat coronavirus and more than 63 crore doses have been administered in the country, according to the CoWIN dashboard.

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