Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 30: Even as vaccination remained the most potential weapon to fight against the spread of Coronavirus two years after the first Corona case was detected in the country on January 30, 2020, the prime minister Narendra Modi on Sunday congratulated the “fellow citizens for achieving the momentous feat of fully vaccinating more than 75 per cent of the adult population in the country.”
The experts said despite various experiments and different treatment methods tried on the Corona patients in the last two years since the detection of the first case, vaccines and following COVID Appropriate Behaviour remained the most effective weapons against the deadly virus.
On the positive side, the experts maintained that after ten days of almost steady decline in the detection of new Corona cases and the fall in the positivity rate indicate that the third wave in India could really have begun its downward journey.
The last two days has seen a dip in the weekly positivity rate, from 16.84 per cent on Thursday to 15.63 per cent on Saturday. This is the first time in more than a month that the weekly positivity rate has gone down. Positivity rate measures the proportion of people who test positive out of the total number of people who are tested. It is a good indicator of how quickly the disease is spreading in the population, or how prevalent it is.
Tagging a tweet posted by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Sunday, Modi said he was proud of all those who are making the vaccination drive a success. The Prime Minister said the number of cases of coronavirus disease in the country, which stood at over 4.10 crore currently, has started declining and that India was fighting the new wave of the pandemic with “great success”. “Now the cases of corona infections have also started decreasing – this is a very positive sign,” Modi said on his monthly “Mann Ki Baat” programme.
Modi also lauded people’s faith in India’s indigenous vaccines against Covid-19 as India achieved the landmark of fully vaccinating 75 per cent of its eligible population. He also congratulated those involved in India’s vaccination drive against coronavirus. India’s vaccine coverage rose to 1,65,70,60,692.
On Sunday, India reported 2,34,281 new Covid-19 cases, 893 deaths and 3,52,784 recoveries in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data. The fresh cases of Covid-19 reported on Sunday morning are marginally lower than those logged on Saturday. Active cases of Covid-19 in the country now stand at 18,84,937, while the daily and weekly positivity rates are at 14.5 per cent and 16.4 per cent respectively.
Looking back, the experts said though a number of drugs and other methods have been tried, no definitive treatment has emerged as yet. The country saw its first case of Covid-19 exactly two years ago when on January 30, 2020, a third-year medical student who returned to her home in Kerala from Wuhan University tested positive. She had returned home following semester holidays and is now keen to return to her university in China to complete her internship.
Since the detection of the first case, India has witnessed three waves of COVID-19, though the line of treatment has remained the same throughout.
Mandaviya also said irrespective of the virus variant, “Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate and Adherence to COVID Appropriate Behaviour’ continue to remain the tested strategy for COVID-19 management. Several medical treatments were also tried to tackle COVID-19 but no widely accepted treatment has been seen till now.
Recently, at a press briefing, NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr V K Paul expressed concern over the “overuse and misuse” of drugs. “The use of steroids can increase the chances of Mucormycosis (black fungus). Steroids are very potent life-saving drugs but they also have side effects and they disturb the immunological protection. They disturb many biochemical pathways. So, it was a very big lesson…we were learning at that time but now we know it,” he had said.
“For fever, paracetamol is given, and for cough, AYUSH syrup can be used. This is what we have prescribed in the home care module too. If the cough continues for more than three days, there is an inhaler called Budesonide. These are the only three things that need to be done. Other than that, gargle and take rest. Do not overdo, it has a cost,” he had warned.
The country tried treatments such as plasma therapy, Remdesivir, DRDO’s anti-Covid drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) and most recently Molnupiravir, but there has been no definitive medicine to cure COVID-19 patients. As attempts to tackle COVID-19 and its most recent variant Omicron continue, vaccines remain the most viable option for mitigating the disease.
AYUSH interventions and Yoga found a special place in the line of treatment. Dr Shuchin Bajaj, Founder Director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals, said AYUSH has an important role in countering cold-related diseases and not just COVID-19. “Yoga has many good asanas for increasing your lung capacity and increasing your strength. And also, meditation has a big role in calming your mind because we have seen that fear, anxiety and depression are some of the key things that come along with COVID-19,” Bajaj said.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) had funded a clinical trial at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rishikesh, to determine if the chanting of the Gayatri Mantra and performing the Yoga practice of Pranayama can aid the quality of recovery as well as cure COVID-19.
Dr Rajeev Rajesh, Chief Yoga Officer, Jindal Naturecure Institute, said though the human body has a natural ability to preserve, self-regulate, repair and maintain its entity, it requires “something extra” to deal with the constant challenges. “That is where the ancient practice of yoga comes into play. To stay healthy and fit physically and mentally, you need to sustain your vital energy, nourish your body, boost immunity and support your mental health. That’s what yoga brings to you,” he said.
“From stretching the muscles to flexing the joints to improving blood flow, asanas shower us with a myriad of benefits that in turn, boost the immunity power of the body,” he added.
The Prime Minister underlined the importance of vaccination and the need to further accelerate the ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ programme to achieve 100 per cent vaccination coverage.
The experts pointed out that during the current wave the positivity rate was being considered a much better indicator of the spread of the disease than the daily case count. This is because a vast majority of the cases remain undetected, and lots of people, even with symptoms, are not getting themselves tested because of the mild nature of the disease caused by Omicron variant and relatively quicker recovery time. In addition, a significant proportion of people have been using home-testing kits whose results often do not get included in the official case counts.
The weekly positivity rate in India had fallen below half a percent in the third week of December before it began to rise amidst an increasing number of infections caused by the Omicron variant. It had risen continuously after that, till this Friday, when a dip was observed for the first time.
A positivity rate of more than 15 per cent, however, was still very high. If the entire duration of the pandemic in India is considered, taking into account all the positive cases detected so far and the number of tests conducted, the positivity rate is lower than six per cent. For a brief period during the second wave, however, the weekly positivity rate had risen as high as 22 per cent.
More than half of all the districts in India, 388 out of 734, continue to have a weekly positivity rate of more than 10 per cent. Another 144 have positivity rates between 5 and 10 per cent. That leaves 202 districts with less than five per cent positivity rate, Health Ministry data shows.
Not surprisingly, some of the highest positivity rates are in Kerala right now, where most of the districts have been reporting over 40 per cent positivity. Four districts — Ernakulam, Kottayam, Idukki and Thiruvananthapuram — have positivity rates over 50 per cent. One district each in Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Haryana, and three in Arunachal Pradesh also have more than 50 per cent positivity right now.
Kerala has been reporting more than 50,000 new cases for the last five days now, its contribution to the national case count now exceeding 20 per cent. Amongst the major states, it is the only one which is not yet showing any signs of decline in the daily case numbers. Andhra Pradesh has also not going down, but there the case count is around 12,000. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, two other states reporting over 25,000 cases every day, seem to have reached their peaks in the third wave and are on their downward journey now.
So far, the cumulative number of doses of vaccine against Covid-19 administered in the country has crossed 165.7 crore.
“With the mantra of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Prayas’, India has vaccinated 75 per cent of its adult population with both doses of the vaccine. We are getting stronger in the fight against the coronavirus,” Mandaviya tweeted as he urged people to follow Covid-19 norms and get vaccinated.
India started the countrywide Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 16, 2021. Vaccination for the age group of 15-18 years began on January 3 this year, while booster doses began being administered to health and frontline workers and the elderly from January 10.