As many countries like Hong Kong, New Zealand and South Korea besides China are reporting a sudden spurt in Covid-19 cases, India---which is reporting decline in infections-- is keeping its fingers crossed with experts adopting a wait and watch policy while cautioning the public to not to let its guards down.
BA.2, the sublineage of Omicron also known as the ‘stealth variant’ which had accelerated the third Covid wave in India, is now causing havoc in many pockets in the East Asian region as well as in the European nations like the UK and Germany.
For instance, South Korea is battling fresh Covid-19 outbreaks as the country registered record infections with over 4,00,000 cases in a day while China recorded 3,290 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, including 11 severe cases. Similarly, cases in New Zealand were on rise with 19,542 new community cases of Covid reported on Wednesday.
In contrast, in India, Covid cases have shrunk to around 2,000 in the past few days. However, Dr NK Arora, chairman of IndiaRs s Covid-19 Working Group of NTAGI, said that Indians should not take the disease "for granted" because new variants can occur any time.
"Any kind of complacency at this time will not be good just because the Omicron wave has subsided so early. We cannot take it for granted and presume that nothing will happen in the future. New variants can occur at all times," said Dr Arora. "Any kind of complacency at this time will not be good just because the Omicron wave has subsided so early. We cannot take it for granted and presume that nothing will happen in the future. New variants can occur at all times," he added. Dr Rahul Bhargava, Hematologist, Fortis Hospital, Gurugram, too said that the virus is very unpredictable and the present variant is very infectious.”
Even if we are seeing fewer cases here, people should continue to adopt covid-appropriate behavior. Increased vaccination coverage has also helped in preventing infection severity.” Over 180 crore vaccines have been administered in India so far.
In India, according to a modelling study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, the fourth wave of Covid-19 is imminent in India and may start around June 22 and peak from mid-to-late August. The study led by Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh of IIT Kanpur's Department of Mathematics and Statistics shows that severity of fourth wave will depend on emergence of a possible new coronavirus variant, and vaccination status across country. The Indian researchers noted that there is always a fair chance that a possible new variant of coronavirus may have an intense impact on the whole analysis. “The characteristics of BA.2 and BA2.2 look similar and since BA.2 has already been the dominant strain in the country, I do not see a reason why India should worry,” said Anurag Agarwal, director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-Indian Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi.