China’s Covid surge may not be immediate threat to India: Experts

The possibility of a very large number of people in China getting infected in the next few weeks has given rise to concerns that the virus may evolve into newer, potentially more dangerous variants that could trigger newer waves of infection elsewhere. Gangakhedkar said that while this was “certainly a possibility”, it was by no means certain.

“Such waves, wherein the virus is spreading at a very fast rate, are unlikely to last very long. Lots of people get infected at the same time. With effective containment measures, the current wave might be over soon. This might not give the virus enough time to develop new mutations,” he said.

Citing the good vaccine coverage in many countries like India, Dr Shekhar Mande, former Director General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has said that concerns of another Covid wave are a bit unfounded in the wake of the surge in cases in countries like China and Japan.

“India has administered 2.2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine till now and several people have also got the booster dose shots and are fairly well protected. If at all a new variant has come in China and are affected we will not see a surge in mortality. Of course, there is a concern but we should not panic. Already the government has taken steps to monitor the situation and the machinery is in place,” says Dr Mande, who is currently a distinguished professor at Pune University.

Dr Sanjay Pujari, infectious diseases expert and member of ICMR national Covid task force, said the current sub-lineages of Omicron variant, circulating in China and elsewhere, were not a high risk for India at the moment.

“Unless there is a variant that has extremely high immune escape potential, coupled with high pathogenicity causing serious illness, we do not foresee an immediate spike in cases in India. All Omicron sub-lineages have not led to a dramatic increase in cases. However, there is a need to be cautious and follow the developments in China,” he said.

India has been reporting less than 200 cases a day on average in the last week. The number of active cases is below 3,500 in the entire country. Deaths have been in single digits. So far, more than 4.46 crore people in India have got the infection and over 5.3 lakh deaths have been reported.

Dr Pujari said that the Indian situation was very different from that in China. “In China, the wall of immunity gained from prior natural infection was missing. The coverage of booster doses of vaccination also seemed inadequate,” he said.

Maharashtra’s surveillance officer Dr Pradeep Awate told The Indian Express that there were just 10-12 new Covid hospital admissions in the entire state last week.

“The good news was there was not a single person on ventilator support. There are just three or four districts where the positivity rate is more than one per cent. On December 18 there were just nine new cases in the entire Maharashtra,” Dr Awate said.