The third wave of Covid-19 seems to be over in the metros of India and the coming months should be peaceful, India’s top genome sequencer and director of CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Dr Anurag Agarwal, told News18.
According to him, there are no reasons to expect a further jump in the number of cases until the virus shows any major change.
“The likelihood of any major change in India’s Covid-19 scenario seems low but as we know that the virus is circulating in the environment, it will keep mutating and dodging the immunity,” Agarwal said.
“The chances of causing severe disease are low, however, following basic Covid-19 appropriate behaviour remains advisable, especially in a poorly ventilated environment.”
On January 10, Omicron coverage in India had exceeded 90% and by February, Delta must have reduced to just a few per cent across cities in India, at most, he claimed. “Very little Delta variant is left in circulation in India.”
With chances of infection going down, the top scientist believes that the requirement of the booster doses in the current situation is low for the general population.
“Also, boosters are not required for everyone. Those who were in need of urgent boosters, the high-exposure health care workers, the vulnerable population above 60 years, have already been getting the doses.”
Scientifically, he explained that the boosters are given to reduce the risk of infection as well as severe disease. “However, right now, with the number of cases going down, many people have already recovered from Omicron, and with no new variant in sight, the risk of infection and disease is already low.”
Going by the public health considerations, only people who are vulnerable and have high risk of exposure need additional vaccine doses right now, he said.
No reason to believe Omicron boosts more than delta
A research by South African scientists suggests that Omicron infection enhances neutralising immunity against the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Agrawal discounts the possibility of Omicron boosting the immunity against other variants since the data is mixed and some people who have shown good neutralization of Delta after Omicron infection may previously have also been infected with Delta, leading to activation of memory cells.
“The thought that Omicron will protect against Delta is based on few studies and there remains the possibility that there may have been prior infection with Delta,” he said
“In such a case, after Omicron infection, development of new antibodies to Omicron will be accompanied by activation of old memory cells that can produce antibodies to Delta. In previously uninfected animals, we are not seeing Omicron induce antibodies that can neutralize other variants,” he explained.
Hence, it’s premature to say that Omicron protects against other variants and generates more antibodies than previous variants. “It is not nature’s vaccine,” he said.
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