COVID-19 third wave: Experts sound warning ahead of festive season, make BIG statement about fall in cases

A day after India achieved the feat of 100 crore vaccination doses, experts warned against complacency and said that though COVID-19 cases are significantly declining, it doesn't necessarily mean the pandemic is now endemic.

With the country celebrating the festive season in full swing, they said a dipping COVID-19 graph is only part of the picture and pointed to factors such as the mortality rate, the need for a larger vaccination cover and examples of countries such as the UK where numbers are again rising, according to a leading news agency.

"I am not sure we are in the endemic state yet. As we celebrate this (100 crore) landmark, there is still some distance to go. We are going towards endemicity, but are not there yet," said top virologist Shahid Jameel, a visiting professor at Ashoka University in Haryana.

Jameel also pointed out that the mortality rate in the country remains steady at about 1.2 per cent. "This tells me that the vaccine coverage in India still needs to increase," he added as quoted by the news agency.

"There have been some confused claims about this recently. Low cases for some time do not necessarily mean endemicity. It is possible that endemicity is close in some parts of the country, but the data needed to confirm this is not easily available,"  added Murad Banaji, senior lecturer in mathematics at UK's Middlesex University who has been closely tracking India's Covid graph and has done several model studies.

"For example, we do not know how many current infections are occurring amongst people who have been vaccinated or infected before," Banaji told the news agency.

India reported 16,326 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours taking the overall case tally to 3,41,59,562, according to the Union Health Ministry's data. Active cases have declined to 1,73,728, the lowest since March 2020.

Meanwhile, the country recorded 666 fatalities in the last 24 hours of which Kerala alone reported 291 deaths, taking the COVID-19 death toll in India to 4,53,708. The national recovery rate was recorded at 98.16%, the highest since March 2020, the health ministry said.

Meanwhile, a week after the Durga Puja celebrations, COVID-19 cases are on the rise in Kolkata as the city reported 242 new infections on Friday. This is a sharp increase from the 127 cases registered last Friday. Looking at the rise in the graph quarantine centres in the city will be reopened on Monday for patients who need to isolate.

Of the newly infected people, 150 were fully vaccinated while 15 of them had taken their first dose of the vaccine.  The more worrying part is that the civic authorities say that 200 of the new infections are asymptomatic which means they may have spread the virus to people around them. And this surge is not just limited to Kolkata but the rest of Bengal is also witnessing a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases.

(With agency inputs)