Chances of new infections, local outbreaks

Thiruvananthapuram

The progressive decline in the State’s COVID-19 case graph and active case pool and the introduction of COVID-19 vaccination seem to have ushered in a sense of feeling that the pandemic is nearly over. A reflection of this can be seen in public behaviour as people have increasingly begun to shun masks and relax on the physical-distancing norms.

However, the State is still very much at risk of a surge as a significant per cent of the population is still naive, public health experts warn.

“The vaccination has brought a lot of reassurance to the people, but we are still a long way from herd immunity levels. The last Indian Council of Medical Research seroprevalence survey says only 11.6% of Kerala’s population have been exposed to the virus. Even with the current vaccination drive, not more than 30% of the population would have achieved vaccine-derived or natural immunity. With a major election campaign round the corner, we should expect new infections and local outbreaks in many places,” says Rakhal Gaitonde, Professor at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology.

Brazil case

He points to the case of Brazil, where a major resurgence in cases (because of the SARS CoV2 variant P.1) happened in Manaus, where three quarters of the population have already been infected once with COVID-19.

It is important that vaccination does not give a false sense of security to the people because vaccines only protect people from serious COVID disease and death, points out a senior public health expert.

“People think that individual immunity will protect them, but as long as active infection is there in the community, even the vaccinated are at risk of contracting and transmitting the infection,” he says.

U.K. case

On Friday, the BBC reported about a new COVID-19 outbreak and one death in a care home at Sidmouth in the U.K., despite the fact that all inmates had received one shot of COVID-19 vaccine.

Though a three-month COVID-19 genomic surveillance project with Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology has been initiated, the role of possible virus variants or local mutations in the State’s transmission dynamics is yet to be factored in. But real-time surveillance for an extended period is necessary, epidemiologists feel. For inexplicable reasons, the government refuses to use the vast resources at its many scientific institutions for the same.

It is too early to speculate about the end of the pandemic but it is important that the government undertake serial serosurvey across all districts to track the extent of the spread of infection and to find out vulnerable pockets in the community which are yet to be exposed to the virus, Dr. Gaitonde says. This will also give the indication on how long the epidemic would last in the State.