COVID-19 inching towards ‘endemic’ phase, says senior epidemiologist at AIIMS

New Delhi: SARS-CoV-2 commonly known as COVID-19 is progressing towards an endemic stage, a senior epidemiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi said on Sunday (January 23). Used to be. Endemic is a stage where cases are confined to a particular geographic location and cases are consistently present in small numbers in that specific area.

Dr Sanjay Rai told here, “Looking at the status of the COVID-19 vaccination and the natural infection, we can say that very soon, most of us will get the infection. And then this virus will turn into an endemic virus.”

The senior epidemiologist at AIIMS also remarked that people who have recovered from COVID are the safest people ever, based on scientific evidence followed by vaccinated individuals.

“Covid-19 is RNA virus and the virus has mutated thousands of times. However, there are only five of concern types like alpha, beta, gamma delta and currently, omicron which is a very fast spreading disease. So very fast Transmission is happening all over the world,” the health expert said.

“The overall severity is low so most of us will get this infection. Based on the current scientific evidence, we can see that people who have recovered from COVID are the safest people ever, then the second best protective individuals.” . are the ones who had the vaccination,” he said.

Dr Rai also said that omicron is spreading due to population density in the country and mainly in metro cities like Delhi and Mumbai, although the progress of virus is slow in rural areas and eastern part of India.

INSACOG, in its latest bulletin, said that the Omicron version of COVID-19 is in the community transmission stage in India and has become effective in several metros, where new cases are increasing rapidly.

INSACOG said in its January 10 bulletin issued on Sunday (23 January) that so far most omicron cases are asymptomatic or mild, hospitalizations and ICU cases have increased in the current wave and the threat level remains unchanged.