Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), On Wednesday, made a statement saying that India may already have started to enter its endemic stage of COVID-19 which will have a low rate of transmission and less fear from the deadly disease.
The senior official declared that this particular stage will be witnessing low or moderate levels of transmission and there will be no exponential growth which was witnessed in the earlier stages of the pandemic.
Statements given by the officials
“We may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where there is low-level transmission or moderate level transmission going on but we are not seeing the kinds of exponential growth and peaks that we saw a few months ago,” said Swaminathan in a recent interview.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from the United States also defined the term endemic as “the constant presence and/or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area”.
What is endemic?
An endemic starts when the people of a particular area eventually learn to live with the disease. An endemic is considered as the observed level of a particular virus because the desired level will always be zero. The very moment the disease crosses the expected levels, it is considered as an epidemic or an outbreak, and that outbreak spreads among other countries it becomes a pandemic.
What did The WHO chief scientist say?
The WHO chief scientist made a statement saying India’s diverse population and its different immunity levels from various parts of the country make it quite clear that the situation might continue with “ups and downs in different parts of the country”.
Swaminathan also added that the cases might arise in a particular place where the people are more susceptible to infection due to being less exposed to the first two waves of covid and low coverage of vaccines.
“As far as India is concerned that seems to be what is happening and because of the size of India and heterogeneity of population and immunity status in different parts of the country in different pockets, it is very very feasible that the situation may continue like this with ups and downs in different parts of the country, particularly where there are more susceptible population, so those groups who were perhaps less affected by first and second waves or those areas with low levels of vaccine coverage we could see peaks and troughs for the next several months,” Swaminathan told the reporters.
