Covid alert: Former AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria has said that there is no need to panic in view of the rising Covid19, H3N2 cases in the country adding majority of the cases are mild.
"Respiratory viral infection cases increase with the change in weather. COVID-H3N2 will also increase... need not panic, hospitalisation & deaths haven't increased dramatically... majority of the cases are mild," Dr Randeep Guleria, Chairman, Institute of Internal Medicine, Respiratory & Sleep Medicine, Director-Medical Education, Medanta said.
"It is always better to be ready. Preparations should be complete. So, I believe that mock drills are always good because we test the system if there is any outbreak or surge in cases. But having said that, we will have to accept that we have not witnessed any rise in cases in hospitals as such," Dr Randeep Guleria said.
"Currently the vaccines that we have in India are covering for what was originally the Wuhan strain. After that we had so many variants. And therefore if we have to have a new vaccine, it should provide cover for the circulating strains like we do for influenza," Guleria said.
Terming the new XBB.1.16 variant as a "new kid on the block" that could be driving the recent rise, Dr Guleria said new variants will keep coming as the virus keeps on mutating over the time but "as long as they don't lead to severe illness, hospitalisation and deaths, it is alright because it helps in giving some degree of immunity to the population if they have mild illness".
On whether XBB 1.16, he said, "Even if we see a surge, there is no need to worry, as long it does not translate into hospitalization and deaths."
Asked whether Covid is now an endemic, he said, "In my opinion, Covid has more or less become endemic. We have a good amount of immunity. Cases will continue and it's going to be here. We will continue to have some waves of cases coming and going but it is not going to cause the kind of waves we saw in the last two years. We will have to learn to live with it."
"We had the H1N1 pandemic in 1918 also. Therefore this virus has been there but it keeps changing and the current circulating strain is H3N2," he said.
"So we all will get influenza on and off but then there is a group which is at risk of getting severe infection and which may need hospitalisation and sometimes even cause death," he added.
"But we have a small group of people who had Covid-19 which caused lung damage and they had lung fibrosis. So their lungs were already compromised to some extent and in some the immunity is also low. So in this small group of people who had Covid and have residual effects of Covid, they again fall in the high risk category and can have more severe infection," he said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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