India logged more than 2.64 lakh new coronavirus infections while witnessing a 6.7 percent jump in new cases during the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Friday. Deaths due to COVID rose by 315, with total fatalities pegged at 485,350.
Delhi, Mumbai and West Bengal, the three COVID hotspots in the latest wave, saw marginal dips in new cases on Friday. Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, however, saw a significant jump in numbers.
The highly transmissive Omicron variant was first discovered in South Africa in November. India has been mainly administering two locally-manufactured vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, since its vaccination drive began in January 2021.
Robust Vaccination
India’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage has crossed 155.92 crore as on January 14. More than 49 lakh vaccine doses were administered till 7 pm on January 14.
India has given the first dose to over 92 percent of its eligible population. Nearly 70 percent of the eligible beneficiaries have got their second doses. Almost 3 crore 15-18-year-old children have been vaccinated.
Over 3.14 crore adolescents, accounting for 42 percent of youngsters between 15-18 years of age, have received the first dose of COVID vaccines in about 11 days since the rollout of the vaccination drive for this category on January 3. The government aims to cover around 80-85 percent of the estimated 7.40 crore youngsters in the 15-17 years age-group by January-end.
India started giving booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to priority groups from January 10. Health and frontline workers and people above 60 years of age with co-morbidities are currently eligible to take the jab.
While the Omicron has taken the centre stage in the third wave, the Delta variant is also prevalent in large numbers. Experts feel that hospitalisations have been rising but the cases are not severe.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that state governments should adopt the mantra of “pre-emptive, pro-active and collective approach” to beat the third wave of the pandemic, even as he emphasised that vaccination is the most potent way to deal with the pandemic.
Tracking the Trajectory
IIT Kanpur professor Manindra Agrawal, who has been tracking the COVID-19 curve in the country using SUTRA model, says India will witness a peak in COVID-19 infection cases soon and that the maximum number of cases are likely to be reported in bigger cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata.
“We are still confident that the peak will occur in the last week of January, but the peak value is unclear. We need to wait till the phase stabilises,” Agarawal tweeted.
India blue curve is showing a slight inward turn. We are still confident that the peak will occur in last week of Jan, but the peak value is unclear. We need to wait until the phase stabilizes. pic.twitter.com/VrtQsjcSq7
— Manindra Agrawal (@agrawalmanindra) January 12, 2022
Gautam Menon, Professor of Physics and Biology, Ashoka University says: “Our models suggest a peak of between 6 lakh and 9 lakh cases across India. As a caveat, testing has remained largely static even as the test-positivity ratio had increased steeply, so we may simply not be testing enough to be able to see the underlying numbers of cases.”
Menon says that it seems well established that the Omicron wave overall was less severe than what was witnessed for the second Delta wave. “Our vaccination programme as well as the fact that the far larger fraction of Indians have been infected once in the previous waves is also a protective factor.”
Chandrakant Lahariya, consultant physician and epidemiologist based in New Delhi, says that it is very likely that in the ongoing wave, India may see a phased peak as the cases in metro, middle towns and rural cities will rise in a phased manner but in quick succession. There might be a sustained number of high cases from the fourth week of January to the second week of February with minor fluctuations before a clear decline and ebbing of the third wave.
New Drugs
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended two new drugs for COVID-19, providing yet more options for treating the disease.
The first drug, Baricitinib, is strongly recommended for patients with severe or critical COVID-19. It is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors that suppress the overstimulation of the immune system. WHO recommends that it is given with corticosteroids.
WHO has also conditionally recommended the use of a monoclonal antibody drug, Sotrovimab, for treating mild or moderate COVID-19 in patients who are at high risk of hospitalisation. This includes patients who are older, immunocompromised, having underlying conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, and those unvaccinated.
In another significant research, Polish scientists discovered a gene that increases the risk of dying from Covid 19.
The research from the Medical University of Bialystok estimates that the gene could be present in about 14% of the Polish population, compared with around 9% in Europe and 27% in India. It’s the fourth-most important factor in determining the severity of the illness after age, weight and gender, it said.
A genetic test “may help to better identify people who, in the event of an infection, may be at risk of an acute disease, even before the infection develops”, said Marcin Moniuszko, a professor in charge of the study.
