Due to Omicron’s sub-variant BA2, there is an increase in the cases of corona virus infection in South Korea, Britain and many countries of Europe. Whereas, if we look at the situation in India, the experts are not looking much worried about the fourth wave here. For this, he counts many reasons including vaccination and immunity. At present, the number of daily cases of infection in the country has been less than 3 thousand for a few days.
According to the Times of India report, Dr. Subhash Salunkhe, Technical Advisor to the Government of Maharashtra and Director General of Health Services, says, ‘We cannot lose caution, because as is happening in the rest of the world, there is a fourth wave in India.’ “The one thing we don’t know about the fourth wave is when it will come and how dangerous it will be,” he said.
Due to increased immunity during the third wave between December 2021 and February and better immunization in most states, there is less concern among experts about the new wave at present. The Omicron variant, which was first detected in South Africa in November 2021, caused trouble around the world. However, after some time it became clear that due to this rapidly spreading variant, there was no significant increase in the number of patients admitted in hospitals and deaths. Experts say that this happened due to vaccination.
Dr Shashank Joshi, who was part of the Maharashtra government’s COVID-19 task force, explains the situation in Mumbai, ‘Due to the genome sequencing, we realized that Omicron’s variants BA1 and BA2 are present here at the beginning of the third wave.’ He said that there is no threat of a new wave in India at present.
He informed, ‘BA2 has been in India. The new Israeli variant is not considered a variant of concern, so until the new VoC comes out, there is nothing to worry about here. However, we should not stop wearing masks. Scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect people again as soon as the antibodies decrease.