World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan on Wednesday said the COVID-19 infection in India will likely enter “some kind of stage of endemicity” marked by low or moderate levels of transmission.
“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,” Swaminathan was quoted by local media.
The endemic stage is when the infection is present in a certain population or region and the people have learnt to live with it.
“As far as India is concerned that seems to be what is happening and because of 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,” she said.
She also expressed hope of India achieving the targeted vaccine coverage of 70% of the population by the end of 2022.
