On Tuesday, the Union health Ministry said that at least 18 states and union territories are showing early signs of flattening of Covid curve. However, this time, the climb down will be a more prolonged process than the first wave and is expected to run till July, believes eminent virologist Shahid Jameel, Director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University.
“In the first wave, we did see a steady decline. But remember this time we are starting from a higher number. Instead of 96,000-97,000 cases, we are starting from over 400,000. So it will take that much longer. And during the process at every time point, you’ll have a lot of cases, Jameel said.
Addressing an online event organised by the Indian Express, Jameel dismissed the narrative that Indians are special and have some special kind of immunity.
“By the time we came to December and the cases kept going down, we did start believing in this narrative (of immunity). There were a lot of big weddings and other super spreading events, including elections rallies and religious congregations, which gave opportunity to the virus to not just spread but also to transmit quickly as people stopped adhering to COVID-19 protocols.”
Further, slamming the poor vaccine coverage, he said, “Enough people did not get vaccinated when they had the opportunity in January and February. Around the third week of February when numbers started going up, we had very, very little vaccine coverage, possibly about 2 per cent of people.”
