Omicron alert: Give jabs to kids, supply boosters
Anew wave of infections in India caused by the latest Covid variant Omicron is inevitable. At a time when European countries are bringing back restrictions and even lockdowns in the face of a rampaging strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, India’s shoddy testing regime at international airports is likely to only delay the spread. It is entirely up to the people to take precautions to stave off the Omicron variant. They have already been given advisories like keeping New Year gatherings to the minimum and follow all protocols to guard against the pandemic. The government, advised by epidemiologists and doctors, has done its fair bit though the vaccination programme would have to pick up considerable pace if it is to cover the entire adult population with two jabs as it has thus far managed to get only about 56 percent double jabbed while 87 per cent of the eligible people have had one dose. The matter of opening up the programme to children between the ages of 13 and 18 has itself been hanging fire, which fate is also shared by authorisation for booster shots.
It is paradoxical that while the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer is letting its capacity go idle in India for want of orders, epidemiologists are still debating over opening up the jabs programme for kids and boosters for all. Surely, funds cannot be the constraint here. It is the duty of the central government to provide all it can to protect the population, a necessity even greater than helping refloating the economy further with stimulus. In the face of a highly transmissible variant that has been seen to double cases in the UK and other nations in under three days, no expense should be spared. It is debatable whether the Omicron wave will be less intense in India because of higher seroprevalence here and whether the disease will continue to be mild even when it affects older and more vulnerable people. The medical infrastructure would have to be cranked up to start preparing for a breakout that could become severe as it picks up pace like the earliest variants did to overwhelm the healthcare system, particularly in the second wave in early 2021 when shortage of medical oxygen proved fatal. We know from experience that lockdowns achieve little except damaging the economy and dragging down people’s morale. Complacency, which has set in with a progressive drop in Covid-19 cases since the height of the pandemic when four lakh infections a day were being reported and 4,000 deaths a day were the average, must be fought. People’s cooperation is vital here as the cost of getting infected is very high for individuals. The unvaccinated must understand that mortality rates among them will be far higher.
To prepare rather than panic is the best indicated course. There isn’t sufficient data yet to suggest the Omicron could be the mild variant that will send the Delta packing and in its global spread reduce the disease to endemic. A sense of urgency to prepare for the worst is needed now lest the pandemic provide a rerun of the horrors of India’s second wave, the true cost of which had been grossly underreported as corpses floated in the Ganga and crematoriums creaked to cope.
There isn’t sufficient data yet
to suggest the Omicron could be
the mild variant that will send the Delta packing and
in its global spread reduce the
disease to an endemic one