- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE sudden surge in Omicron cases in India makes it evident that the third wave of the pandemic has already started in the country, the chief of India’s vaccine task force told one of the country’s leading news channels NDTV on Monday (3).
He said a large chunk of the Omicron cases have been reported from the big cities. Metros such as Mumbai, national capital Delhi and Kolkata have a combined 75 per cent share of infections of the highly infectious Omicron variant which was first detected in South Africa in November, Dr NK Arora, who is the chairman of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) and has been very closely involved with the rollout of vaccines from the very beginning, said.
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The NTAGI “fulfils a need for informing decision-making concerning the introduction of new vaccines and strengthening the Universal Immunisation Programme”, as per its website.
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“Look at whatever the variants have been genome sequenced… We got our first virus right in the first week of December. So, last week, nationally overall, 12 per cent of the variants identified were Omicron and the week gone by in the previous week, it has increased to 28 per cent.
So, it is rapidly increasing as a proportion of all the Covid infections in the country. Now, having said that, I must also say something more important and that is that around the major metro cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and particularly Delhi, it is over 75 per cent of all the isolates now,” he said.
India, which has the second-most number of infections in the world after the US and the third-highest death tally after the US and Brazil, has so far reported 1,700 Omicron cases with the western state of Maharashtra reporting the most number of cases (510).
The country also witnessed a 22 per cent rise in new Covid-19 cases, government data showed on Monday morning.
“India is clearly in the third wave of COVID-19. And the whole wave seems to be driven by a new variant and today it is Omicron,” Dr Arora told the news channel, adding this is backed by evidence from the last four to five days that saw “galloping increase in the number of cases”.
Dr Arora rubbished concerns that vaccines being administered to the 15-18 age group, a programme which was flagged off on Monday, could be unsafe as the doses had their shelf-life extended.
“It is absolutely safe. See, initially when the vaccines were being produced, the overall shelf-life issues were available only for that period when the studies were being done.
Now, today, with the experience and the time, since when the vaccine was produced, the shelf-life has been evaluated through various animal studies. And it clearly shows that the vaccine is effective and active potency is maintained up to 12 months,” Dr Arora said.
Indian pharma company Bharat Biotech was allowed to extend the shelf-life of Covaxin, the only vaccine which is being given to minors, by India’s drugs regulator on December 20.
