Fighting corona
After more than two years the world has opened up after threat from the dreaded coronavirus put us on the back foot and all activities remained grounded for long. Right now all activities have been resumed and the most promising thing that has surfaced is that schools, colleges and institutions of higher learning too have opened up.
Beside, the same stands true for other activities and businesses as all activities have been running at full speed meaning that the loses and the recession that was being otherwise predicted will be done away with.
However, there are still some worries which concern a common man as fears of the virus making a comeback-as the third wave proved, have been disturbing us. Though the intensity may not be predicted about any future possible wave, but one thing is certain that the panic and turmoil the pandemic had managed to spread when it broke out has subsided.
The next wave of covid-19 it at all, it hits us can prove to be much more mild as even some experts too have been suggesting over the past few weeks now. They have even been more bold by announcing that that no fourth wave will occur in the country unless an unexpected variant that behaves differently comes up.
The claim proves right as the virus has grown quite weak over the past several weeks now and on Tuesday India logged 3,993 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 662 days.
The third wave of COVID-19 had plateaued in India and the number of cases started declining after January 21 when 3,47,254 infections were reported. The ddecline has since then been rapid with Tuesday reporting below 4K cases across the vast country like India.
The recent cases that have surfaced point out to the fact that the third wave has ended and the country has entered an endemic phase once again.
The ‘endemic stage’ is when a population learns to live with a virus. It is different from the ‘epidemic stage’ when the virus overwhelms a population. The third wave that resulted in emergence of cases at a fast pace was primarily due to the arrival of Omicron variant which during its initial stage acted strangely and added to the daily infection cases at a rapid pace.
However, the timely decision of enhancing vaccine coverage including the decision of resorting to booster doses meant that the virus spread was not only contained but a significant immunity was developed among the major chunk of the population.
Experts have now grown more confident about the behavior of the virus that they have now suggested that going by the available information in India — epidemiological and virus variants — and the global trend, it can be fairly be said that no fourth wave will occur, notwithstanding erudite mathematical model predictions.
The experts belief comes from the fact that all past pandemics of respiratory-transmitted diseases have been due to influenza and every influenza pandemic ended after two or three waves, and remained in an endemic phase, with minor fluctuations of seasonal upsurges, always settling back to low numbers.
This seems quite encouraging for all of us and as the world including India opens up completely for all sort of activities we still need to stick to SOP’s and help to fight the virus with much more grit and determination.
KV Network
