Third COVID-19 wave is very unlikely in India : AIIMS chief Randeep Guleria

Dr Guleria was speaking at the release of “Going Viral”, a book on the formulation of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin by Dr Balram Bhargava, Director General, ICMR.

AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria said on Tuesday evening that India does not yet need a booster dose of the Kovid-19 vaccine, there is a need to focus on increasing the vaccine coverage. He also said that the likelihood of a “huge third wave” is “decreasing with every passing day”.

“Vaccines are stalling, we are not seeing successful infections leading to an increase in our admissions, our sero-positivity rate is very high. These all suggest that right now, we don’t really need a booster dose.

We may need it in the future, that’s for sure. But we don’t need a booster dose right now. “We are well protected and I think we should focus on getting as many people as possible to get the first and second doses because if we have enough of this number, we as a country Will be well protected.”

Dr Guleria was speaking at the release of “Going Viral”, a book on the formulation of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin by Dr Balram Bhargava, Director General, ICMR.

On the third wave, Dr Guleria said: “As our immunization program progresses, as we are seeing less vaccine hesitancy and as we are seeing vaccines prevent serious disease and prevent hospitalization and death In case of – the chance is declining in any major wave with each passing day.

It is highly unlikely that we will see a major third wave. “But the disease will be endemic and we will continue to have cases… We will have some patients who will be sick but it will not be of the magnitude that we saw in the first and second waves and most of us will be safe.”

NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul said that more research needs to be done on the question of booster dose in the country.

“When you decide on an additional dosage, it should be based on good information and there are many aspects to it.

It should be different for different vaccines… The data for A may not be applicable for B… Another question is of duration. Is it six months, nine months?… We are looking at the data systematically, we are looking at how it should be done… As of now, a vaccine priority for a booster for any nation is when you Give two doses to a large population. That work is not done… there is also a moral dimension that people are waiting for their first two doses…”

Speaking on the journey of manufacturing and approval of Covaxin, Dr Bhargava mentioned several milestones – becoming the fifth country to isolate a strain of coronavirus, tracing the contacts of the first case diagnosed in India in January 2020, boosted testing and in September became the first to use antigen tests to start on-demand testing and send test kits to other parts of the world – and the successful trial of the Indian vaccine on 20 monkeys marked a turning point in its formulation as remembered. Vaccination.

Referring to the monkeys as the “Unsung Hero”, he said, “There are no breeding facilities, we had to get the monkeys from the wild… we had to capture the monkeys… we got all the permissions within 24 hours.” , who were monkey catchers in the forests of Telangana border, Karnataka border, Maharashtra. They were able to catch 24 monkeys within a week…”