Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 19: Even as India recorded a marginal increase in the number of fresh Coronavirus cases on Wednesday compared to Tuesday, the World health Organisation said the worst of the Corona pandemic including deaths, hospitalisation and the consequential lockdown could be over this year, if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of emergencies at the WHO said on Tuesday.
A similar sentiment was also expressed by India vaccine manufacturer Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII), the manufacturer of “Covishield” vaccine. “In order to reach the end of the pandemic, billions of people need to be vaccinated at a faster pace, Poonawalla said. “The Covid vaccine supply is no longer a constraint… and we are in a much better place than last year to meet the demands,” Poonawalla added. He also called for establishment of a clear standard for vaccine trials and harmonised framework for vaccine approval and distribution.
India recorded 2,82,970 new Covid cases and 441 related deaths in the last 24 hours ending 8 am Wednesday, data updated by the Union Ministry of Health showed. The daily count is a slight increase from Tuesday’s 2,38,018 cases.
The active caseload, too, has increased to 18,31,000, up from Tuesday’s 17.3 lakh. The daily positivity rate climbed to 15.13 per cent.
Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said “we may never end the virus because such pandemic viruses end up becoming part of the ecosystem.” But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.
WHO has slammed the imbalance in Covid vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.
“What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die,” Ryan said. “The issue is: It’s the death. It’s the hospitalizations. It’s the disruption of our social, economic, political systems that’s caused the tragedy not the virus.”
Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.
“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.
Public health officials have warned it is highly unlikely COVID-19 will be eliminated and say it will continue to kill people, though at much lower levels, even after it becomes endemic.
Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the “enormous urgency” of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being “hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.”
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decried the “total collapse of global cooperation and solidarity” over the last two years, saying it was “totally unacceptable” how few people in Africa have gotten vaccine shots. His agency says only 10% of Africa’s 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated. He also sought to douse the belief among some that vaccine hesitancy is widespread in Africa, citing studies that say 80% of Africans were ready to get shots if the vaccines were available.
Poonawalla said all governments should come together for agreements on export restrictions that can help deal better with pandemics. He also made a strong case for setting up a centralised regulatory body for vaccine certificates to make travel and movement convenient. Poonawalla admitted that his SII, which is manufacturing Covishield, had to curtail production last year but “in the first quarter or so, the vaccine maker could supply over a billion doses through Covax to the African continent”.
Meanwhile, the Omicron tally in India has reached 8,961 — an increase of 0.79 per cent since yesterday, the Ministry said.
The third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to sweep Kerala with the test positivity rate surging to 37.17 percent on Wednesday.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday said the Covid-19 positivity rate in the city is not low enough to lift the restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the infection and that the government will monitor the situation for three to four days. He also said the city is likely to see around 13,000 cases on Wednesday, with a positivity rate of around 24 per cent.